INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


PAGE  LECTURE  SERIES 

Addresses  delivered  before  the  Senior 
Class  of  the  Sheffield  Scientific  School,  Yale 
University. 

Morals  in  Modern  Business 

With  an  introduction  by  Mr.  Ripley 
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Every-day  Ethics 

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Industry  and  Progress 


BY 


NORMAN  HAPGOOD 


ADDRESSES  DELIVERED  IN  THE  PAGE 
LECTURE  SERIES,  1910,  BEFORE  THE 
SENIOR  CLASS  OF  THE  SHEFFIELD 
SCIENTIFIC  SCHOOL,  YALE  UNIVERSITY 


New  Haven:   Yale  University  Press 

London:   Henry  Frowde 

Oxford  University  Press 

M  C  M  X I 


Copyright,  1911. 

BY 

Yale  University  Press 


First  printed  February,  1911,  1500  copies 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


CHAPTER  I. 
Employment. 

Why,  in  ancient  history,  do  we  read  so  little  of 
how  most  men  lived?  In  the  Rome  of  Julius 
Cossar  the  plebeians  were  much  more  numerous 
than  the  aristocrats  and  middle  class  combined, 
yet  the  most  assiduous  research  wnll  give  them  in 
fragmentary  glimpses  only.  We  know  vaguely 
that  they  slept  crowded  in  unsafe  tenements,  but  as 
that  condition  gave  to  the  owners  and  statesmen 
no  concern,  history  has  encumbered  itself  with  no 
details.  The  plebeian  was  of  as  slight  human 
moment  as  the  slave.  He  was  "fickle,"  "violent" 
or  "dirty,"  but  few  other  adjectives  were  needed 
for  him.  In  Greece  also  manual  labor  was  lower- 
ing, and  masses  of  the  population  were  looked 
upon  without  respect.  Such  thinkers  as  Aristotle 
and  Plato  believed  the  higher  attributes  of  man 
were  inconsistent  with  ordinary  labor.  Cicero 
observes  that  "all  gains  made  by  hired  laborers 
are  dishonorable  and  base."  Their  work  is 
"slavish,"  and  "all  retail  dealing  may  be  put  in 

the  same  class The  work  of  all  artisans  is 

sordid.      There   can    he   nothing   honorable   in    a 
workshop."     This  view,  that  the  common  forms 

[1] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


of  labor  and  of  business,  instead  of  being  dignified, 
were  degrading,  lasted  until  within  a  century. 
Sympathetic  attention  given  to  the  lives  and  occu- 
pations of  the  many  is  the  great  spiritual  progres- 
sive step  of  our  time. 

Whether  or  not  the  fate  be  a  blessing  or  a 
curse,  man  must  forever  struggle  to  live,  and  we 
are  no  longer  satisfied  that  this  strife  with  nature 
shall  be  rendered  gloomy  and  hopeless  for  the 
many.  Work  is  beneficent  in  moderation,  killing 
in  excess,  and  the  ideal  toward  which  we  climb  is 
so  to  arrange  our  world  that  no  man  shall  be  in- 
jured by  labor,  while  all  shall  share  it.  Nobody 
of  free  intelligence  now  looks  upon  it  as  an 
honor  to  live  upon  the  sweat  of  another's  brow. 
Today  wealth  puts  a  just  man  in  an  attitude  of 
apology.  He  feels  the  need  of  showing  that  his 
wealth  is  so  employed  as  to  benefit  the  race.  Com- 
plete idleness  and  wasteful  luxury  are  badges  of 
failure.  Some  of  those  now  listening  here  will  be 
manufacturers,  some  lawyers,  others  legislators. 
Wherever  you  are,  these  fundamental  questions 
of  human  worth  will  offer  themselv'es.  Some  of 
you  will  be  conducting  small  businesses;  on  a  minor 
scale  you  will  be  em.ploying  men.  Their  destinies, 
and  the  destinies  of  their  wives,  children,  and  gen- 

[2J 


EMPLOYMENT 


erations  after  them,  will  be  partly  In  your  hands. 
I  say,  without  any  distrust,  that  it  takes  as  much — 
nay,  more — ability,  character  and  virtue  to  carry 
on  a  retail  grocery,  without  loss  and  yet  with 
justice,  than  it  does  to  fill  with  credit  a  seat  In  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States.  To  conduct  any 
business  with  honesty  and  profit  tests  a  man  to  the 
very  full.  The  founder  of  this  course  knows  one 
place  where  devoted  strength  is  needed  most. 
He  is  himself  a  business  man.  He  realizes  that 
the  momentous  questions  of  our  day  are  business 
questions.  No  political  or  social  scheme  will 
work  unless  the  country  is  supplied  with  men  who 
live  up  to  high  standards  in  private  enterprise. 
"To  whomsoever  much  is  given,  of  him  shall  much 
be  required."  Without  that  motto  there  can  be 
no  advance.  Thelnore  we  go  forward,  the  more 
clearly  we  hear  the  calls  of  the  submerged.  No 
man  who  has  used  money  in  Industry,  and  used  it 
for  betterment,  can  feel  that  his  life  has  been 
without  its  worth.  Carlyle  said  that  the  time 
approached  when  one  who  had  no  light  to  shed  on 
Industrial  problems  could  make  no  claim  to  leader- 
ship, and  this  saying  is  as  applicable  to  private  life 
as  to  public  glare — to  the  housewife  as  to  the 
millionaire.       Our   citizenship   will   not   be    right 

[3] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


until  we  measure  success  not  by  size,  or  victory 
over  others,  but  by  justice  and  victory  over  error. 
The  desire  to  surpass  is  tonic  in  proportion,  poison 
in  excess;  poisonous  beyond  exaggeration,  when  it 
means  willingness  to  crush  the  undefended. 

"Such  hath  it  been — shall  be — beneath  the  sun 
The  many  still  must  labor  for  the  one." 

Perhaps.  The  one  for  whom  the  many  labor 
is  worse  than  criminal  if  he  is  relentless  in  his 
vantage  post.     Says  Huxley: 

"Any  social  condition  in  which  the  development  of 
wealth  involves  the  misery,  the  physical  weakness  and 
the  degradation  of  the  worker,  is  absolutely  and  in- 
fallibly doomed  to  collapse.  Your  bayonets  and  cut- 
lasses will  break  under  your  hand,  and  there  will  go  on 
accumulating  in  society  a  mass  of  hopeless,  physically 
incompetent  and  wholly  degraded  people,  who  are,  as 
it  were,  a  sort  of  dynamite  which  sooner  or  later,  when 
its  accumulation  becomes  sufficient  or  its  tension  unbear- 
able, will  burst  the  whole  fabric." 

Other  civilizations  have  risen  and  gone.  Ours 
looks  stable,  and  has  lasted  for  centuries,  but 
nothing  can  so  much  protect  it  from  overthrow  as 
a  satisfying  solution  of  social  inequalities.  Hap- 
pily our  progress  is  undoubted.  I  have  spoken  of 
the  superior  social  ethics  of  our  time.     Even  with- 

[4] 


EMPLOYMENT 


in  comparatively  few  years  a  change  has  taken 
place  which  is  thus  described  in  "The  Labor 
Movement"  by  Professor  Ely: 

"The  length  of  a  day's  labor  varied  from  twelve  to 
fifteen  hours.  The  New  England  Mills  generally  ran 
thirteen  hours  a  day  the  year  round,  but  one  mill  in 
Connecticut  ran  fourteen  hours,  while  the  length  of 
actual  labor  in  another  mill  in  the  same  state,  the  Eagle 
Mill  at  Griswold,  was  fifteen  hours  and  ten  minutes, 
....  Windows  were  nailed  down  and  the  operatives 
deprived  of  fresh  air,  and  a  case  of  rebellion  on  the  part 
of  one  thousand  females  on  account  of  tyrannical  and 
oppressive  treatment  is  mentioned.  Women  and  children 
were  urged  on  by  the  use  of  a  cowhide,  and  an  instance  is 
given  of  a  little  girl,  eleven  j^ears  of  age,  whose  leg  was 
broken  with  a  'billet  of  wood.'  " 

As  we  continue  our  advance,  ever  new  heights 
become  accessible  and  righteous  demands  increase, 
and  the  only  road  is  to  live  up  to  the  best  visions 
opened  from  the  ground  already  won.  The  pres- 
ent movement  of  investigation,  although  in  its 
highest  aspect  a  movement  of  undoubted  right,  is 
in  another  aspect  a  policy  of  insurance  for  all  in 
our  civilization  that  we  deem  best  worth  the 
saving. 

In  a  striking  passage  of  his  "Social  Problems," 
Henry  George  speaks  of  the  increasing  depend- 

[5] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


ence  upon  the  virtues  of  our  fellows  which  is 
forced  upon  us  by  the  growing  specialization  of 
all  life.  Those  w^ho  live  today  "may  travel  at  a 
speed  incredible  to  the  savage;  but  in  doing  so  re- 
sign life  and  limb  to  the  care  of  others.  A  broken 
rail,  a  drunken  engineer,  a  careless  switchman, 
may  hurl  them  to  eternity."  As  society  develops, 
therefore,  a  higher  and  higher  degree  of  social 
intelligence  is  required.  Once  each  fam.ily  pro- 
duced its  own  food,  made  its  own  clothing,  built 
its  own  house,  and  if  it  moved  furnished  its 
own  transportation.  The  same  social  tendencies 
which  have  made  us  more  dependent  upon  one 
another  have  made  us  more  dependent  upon  the 
law.  Imagine  a  single  employer,  facing  and  fully 
realizing  the  hardships  of  the  men  who  work  for 
him,  and  eager  to  treat  fairly  his  employees  and 
customers  alike.  It  will  be  impossible  for  him  to 
do  it  and  survive,  unless  he  receives  some  protec- 
tion from  statute  and  from  public  feeling.  Other- 
wise competition  will  undo  him.  Even  a  single 
unscrupulous  or  selfish  employer  can  sometimes 
make  business  impossible  on  moral  standards  for 
a  number  of  his  competitors.  Take  so  simple  a 
case  as  the  working  hours  of  barbers.  Almost 
all  would  be  glad  to  close  their  shops  on  Sunday, 

[6] 


EMPLOYMENT 


but  if  a  few  refuse,  in  order  to  make  extra  money, 
they  can  gradually  entice  customers  from  the 
others,  and  thus  possibly  ruin  their  business,  A 
law  here  is  necessary  to  enable  the  individual  to  do 
right.  The  same  principle  can  be  applied  to 
hours  in  more  complicated  industries;  to  wages;  to 
such  matters  as  the  employment  of  children.  The 
majority  of  the  employers  whose  spirit  has  fallen 
under  my  observation  would  welcome  the  exist- 
ence, and  stern,  equal  enforcement,  of  laws  which 
would  help  toward  social  right.  Many  of  them 
go  ahead,  without  the  sufficient  aid  of  law,  to  use 
their  brains  toward  making  justice  pay,  as  brains 
can  often  do;  sometimes  even  to  put  justice  into 
effect,  if  they  can  afford  it,  even  where  they  can- 
not make  it  so  profitable  as  heartless  exploitation 
can  be  made. 

Let  us  now  consider  a  few  illustrations  of  what 
employers  are  showing  of  stupid  hostility  to 
obviously  right  measures,  and  other  illustrations 
of  what  they  are  contributing  to  progress.  When 
Mr.  Page  asked  me  to  give  this  course  I  told  him 
I  lacked  sufficient  knowledge,  whereupon  he  re- 
plied that  what  he  desired  was  an  approach  to 
these  questions  such  as  is  exhibited  in  Collier's 
Weekly,    representing  the   attentive   interest  of 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


one  concerned  In  controversies  of  the  day.  While 
some  of  my  illustrations,  therefore,  will  be  drawn 
from  reading,  others  will  relate  to  the  problems 
in  which  a  serious  journalist,  like  a  serious  legis- 
lator, is  continually  involved;  for  we  all — journal- 
ists, politicians,  lawyers  and  business  men — If  we 
think,  are  brought  to  face  this  set  of  rapidly  chang- 
ing questions. 

In  a  special  message  to  Congress,  dated  January 
31,  1908,  Theodore  Roosevelt  said: 

"Exactly  as  the  working  man  is  entitled  to  his  wages, 
so  he  should  be  entitled  to  indemnit;  for  the  injuries  sus- 
tained in  the  natural  course  of  his  labor 

"An  employer's  liability  law  does  not  really  mean 
mulcting  employers  in  damages.  It  merely  throws  upon 
the  employer  the  burden  of  accident  insurance  against 
injuries  which  are  sure  to  occur.  It  requires  him  either 
to  bear  or  to  distribute  through  insurance  the  loss  which 
can  readily  be  borne  when  distributed,  but  which,  if  un- 
distributed, bears  with  frightful  hardship  upon  the  un- 
fortunate victim  of  accident." 

In  the  year  1908  Collier's  Weekly  took  up 
the  case  of  a  man  named  Merritt,  who  had  been 
injured  In  the  employ  of  a  vast  industrial  con- 
cern. His  fate  had  elements  of  impressiveness, 
not  the  least  of  which  was  that  the  great  corpora- 

[8] 


EMPLOYMENT 


tion  which  employed  him  was  conducted  by  a 
family  of  unusual  liberality  and  honesty,  so  that 
the  tragedy  brought  out  not  the  fault  of  any  per- 
son, but  the  inequity  of  a  social  system.  He  was 
one  of  6,000  employees  under  the  command  of 
one  branch  of  this  vast  company,  and  of  course 
he  was  a  pawn,  with  no  discretion,  obliged  to  do 
what  was  commanded,  morally  responsible  only 
for  sobriety  and  efficiency.  On  July  i,  1907,  his 
superintendent  ordered  this  employee,  who  was  an 
electric  repair  man,  to  inspect  one  of  the  powerful 
electric  cranes  which,  suspended  above  the  factory 
rooms,  lift  and  move  the  heavy  iron.  As  Merritt, 
after  reaching  the  top  of  the  room,  stepped  upon 
the  crane,  the  operator  whose  function  it  was  to 
apply  the  power  to  that  machine  suddenly  pulled  a 
lever,  the  electricity  leaped  into  the  crane,  Merritt 
was  thrown  into  the  gearing,  the  cogs  tore  into 
his  flesh,  his  right  arm  was  crushed,  blood  poi- 
soning set  in,  and  his  other  arm  was  rendered 
almost  useless. 

For  ten  hours'  work  Merritt  was  earning  $2.75, 
and  by  working  ov^ertime  he  averaged  $90  a  month 
and  lived  in  modest  comfort.  Dark  indeed  was 
the  outlook  facing  the  disabled  laborer.  While 
he  was   lying  in   the  hospital,   a   visitor  was  an- 

[9] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


nounced.  It  was  Mr.  Blank,  special  agent  for  the 
company,  come  to  offer  Merritt  the  directors' 
sympathy  and  $50  in  ready  money.  For  this  pres- 
ent he  requested  a  "receipt."  Unlike  many  work- 
men, Merritt  read  the  "receipt,"  and  discovered 
that  it  contained,  hidden  in  complicated  print,  an 
absolute  release  of  all  claims  against  the  company. 
Here  is  a  reproduction  of  the  paper — a  document 
which,  being  typical  and  not  exceptional,  may  well 
have  an  interest  to  future  generations,  wishing  to 
know  what  ideas  of  justice  prevailed  in  this  com- 
munity at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century, 
and  were  therefore  applied  even  by  exceptionally 
generous  employers : 

"Know  all  men  by  these  presents,  That  I, 
Walter  Merritt,  of  the  Citj^  of  Chicago,  County  of 
Cook  and  State  of  Illinois,  for  and  in  consideration 
of  the  sum  of  fifty  dollars  to  me  in  hand  paid  by  The 
International  Harvester  Company,  a  New  Jersey  Corpor- 
ation, the  receipt  whereof  is  hereby  acknowledged,  do 
hereby  release  and  forever  discharge  said  International 
Harvester  Company  from  all  claims  and  demands  and 
each  J  every  and  all  rights  cause  and  causes  of  action  of 
every  name,  nature  and  description  whatsoever,  which  I 
now  have  or  which  has  accrued  in  my  favor  against  it, 
said  International  Harvester  Company,  arising  or  grow- 
ing out  of  or  by   reason  of  any    matter,   cause   or  thing 

[10] 


EMPLOYMENT 


whatsoever,  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  to  the 

DAY  OF  the  date  HEREOF. 

"And,  I  do  further  hereby  declare  that  said  Interna- 
tional Harvester  Company  has  not,  nor  has  anyone  for  it, 
or  in  its  name,  at  any  time  prior  to  the  execution  and  de- 
livery of  this  release  by  me,  made  me  any  offer  of  em- 
ployment, nor  held  out  to  me  any  inducement  of  future  em- 
ployment in  any  capacity  whatever,  as  a  part  consideration 
for  the  execution  of  this  release,  and  that  I  thoroughly 
understand  the  meaning  of  this  release  and  know  that  its 
execution  by  me  is  an  absolute  waiver  and  bar  of  all  and 
every  claim  and  demand  I  may  have  against  said  company 
of  every  name  and  description,  and  that  under  no  circum- 
stances can  I  sue  or  maintain  any  action,  suit  or  proceed- 
ing against  said  company  by  reason  of  any  matter  or 
thing  whatsoever  happening  to  me,  or  arising  in  my  favor 
against  said  company  prior  to  the  execution  and  delivery 
hereof;  and  I  further  expressly  state  that  no  fraud  or  un- 
due influence  on  the  part  of  said  company,  or  on  the  part 
of  anyone  representing  it,  has  in  any  way  entered  into  this 
release  or  into  any  of  the  steps  leading  up  to  it. 

"Witness  my  hand  and  seal  this  24th  day  of  July, 
A.  D.  1907. 

Witnesses:  (Seal) 


[H] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


State  of  Illinois,    | 
County  of  Cook.    ) 

I, ,  a  notary  public  in  and 

for  said  county,  in  the  state  aforesaid,  do  hereby  certify 
that  Walter  Merritt,  who  is  personally  known  to  me  to 
be  the  same  person  whose  name  is  subscribed  to  the  fore- 
going instrument,  appeared  before  me  this  day  in  person 
and  acknowledged  that  he  signed,  sealed  and  delivered 
the  said  instrument  as  his  free  and  voluntary  act  for  the 
uses  and  purposes  therein  set  forth. 

"Given  under  my  hand  and  notarial  seal  this  24th  day 
of  July,  A.  D.  1907. 

Notary  Public." 

According  to  Merritt,  whose  story  is  supported 
at  least  by  the  general  custom  of  claim-agents,  the 
lawyer's  arguments  to  him  ran  like  this : 

"Now,  Walter,  you  know  we  don't  want  any  trouble 
about  this.  When  you  get  well,  I'll  see  what  I  can  do 
for  you.  Don't  go  to  any  lawyer,  for  if  you  do  I  may  not 
be  able  to  help  you  at  all,  for  you  know  it  wasn't  our 
fault  that  you  got  hurt,  and  we  could  beat  you  in  a  law- 
suit. We  always  win  our  cases.  I'm  telling  you  this  as 
a  friend. 

"The  International  Harvester  Company  is  a  New  Jer- 
sey corporation.  If  you  sue  the  company  for  more  than 
$2,000  it  will  transfer  the  case  to  the  Federal  court,  be- 
cause it  claims  to  be  a  citizen  of  New  Jersey  and  you  are 
a  citizen  of  Illinois.  The  Federal  courts  will  probably 
decide  that  you  and  the  craneman  were  fellow  servants, 

[12] 


EMPLOYMENT 


and  you  would  lose  your  case  there.  But  you  might  sue 
in  the  State  courts  for  $2,000,  and  the  company  could  not 
transfer  the  case  to  the  Federal  court,  because  that  court 
will  not  consider  any  case  unless  the  amount  sued  for  is 
more  than  $2,000.  In  cases  like  yours  the  law  of  Illinois 
is  much  more  favorable  to  the  plaintiff  than  that  of  the 
United  States  courts,  and  you  could  probably  win  in  the 
State  courts.  The  company  will  appeal  if  a  jury  decides 
in  your  favor.  The  calendars  of  the  courts  are  crowded 
with  thousands  of  cases  like  yours  against  corporations, 
and  it  would  take  at  least  three  years  to  collect  your 
damages." 

Thus  helped  by  the  publicity  created  through  a 
powerful  newspaper — an  ally  not  accessible  usual- 
ly to  mutilated  workingmen — by  an  intelligent 
lawyer,  and  by  an  acute  and  sympathetic  judge, 
Walter  Merritt  won  his  case.  Had  It  not  been 
for  a  peculiar  collocation  of  fortunate  accidents 
the  struggle  would  have  ended  in  defeat.  Com- 
pensation is  obtained,  I  believe,  in  the  absence  of 
liability  statutes,  in  about  one  case  in  ten.  Heaven 
knows,  even  after  legal  victory,  the  result  is 
tragedy  for  Merritt,  his  wife  and  two  small  chil- 
dren. The  bright  side  of  this  story  is  that  the 
McCormick  Company,  frequently  ahead  of 
prevailing  standards,  soon  after  voluntarily  put 
an  employers'  liability  system  into  practice. 

[13] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


At  common  law  the  employer  was  compelled 
only  to  show  reasonable  care  in  providing  a  place 
to  work,  tools,  appliances  and  rules,  and  in  hiring 
fellow  servants.  The  employee  had  no  recourse  if 
he  had  been  guilty  of  contributory  negligence  in 
any  degree,  or  if  his  injury  was  due  to  the  negli- 
gence of  a  fellow  servant.  The  employee  was 
taken  to  "assume  the  risk."  Following  the  lead 
of  Germany,  one  civilized  country  after  another 
has  recognized  the  antiquated  absurdity  of  these 
rules.  Compensation  should  be  compulsory  and 
automatic,  or  the  laborer  has  no  chance.  What 
the  old  law  has  usually  meant  is  shown  clearly  in  a 
recent  incident  in  New  Jersey.  A  girl  went  to  her 
employer  and  complained  that  her  machine  was 
unsafe.  He  told  her  to  mind  her  own  business. 
Soon  the  defective  machine  caused  her  the  loss  of 
one  arm.  The  manufacturer  resisted  damages  on 
the  ground  that  she  had  assumed  the  risk,  her 
knowledge  being  shown  by  the  fact  that  she  had 
mentioned  the  defect  to  him.  In  Germany  he 
would  have  been  liable  in  semi-criminal  proceed- 
ings. 

A  short  time  after  the  Merritt  story  was  in 
print,  the  attorney  for  one  of  the  largest  indus- 
trial enterprises  in  the  world  called  to  state  his 

[14] 


EMPLOYMENT 


view  of  employers'  liability,  fearing,  as  he  said, 
that  his  concern  might  be  next  attacked.  Mem- 
bers of  our  staff,  in  a  long  and  patient  conversa- 
tion, endeavored  to  explain  that  Collier's  de- 
sired not  to  attack  anybody,  but  to  make  clear, 
through  specific  cases,  the  necessity  of  protecting 
the  laborer  against  poverty  from  causes  uncon- 
trollable by  him.  Our  laborious  arguments  were 
vain;  the  attorney,  with  every  appearance  of  con- 
viction, stated  and  reiterated  the  time-honored  no- 
tions of  his  tribe : 

1.  The  company  was  kind  to  its  employees. 
It  provided  hospitals  for  them  to  use  when  they 
were  mangled. 

2.  If  there  were  a  compensation  act,  workmen 
would  lose  their  limbs  on  purpose. 

3.  "Shyster"  lawyers  were  continually  urging 
laborers  to  bring  suit. 

4.  Juries  were  unfair  to  corporations. 

5.  Employees  would  drink  up  the  money  any- 
way. 

There  were  other  arguments,  too  irrelevant,  too 
heartless,  too  shallow  to  record. 

Let  us  pass  to  another  urgent  social  need,  on 
which  some  employers  of  labor  have  taken  a  posi- 
tion as  curiously  unseeing.     Modern  science  has 

[15] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


come  to  understand  the  importance  of  fatigue. 
The  old  Mephistopheles  is  dead,  but  many  devils 
have  arisen,  competing  for  his  place,  and  weari- 
ness is  one.  It  is  the  mother  of  disease.  It  not 
only  excludes  joy,  gives  birth  to  languid  gloom, 
shuts  the  windows  of  the  mind,  but  constantly  it 
fosters  illness  in  the  body.  Our  tired  system  is 
the  easy  prey  of  colds,  and  colds  in  the  weary  be- 
come pneumonia,  and  the  general  deterioration 
of  the  body  welcomes  the  great  scourge,  consump- 
tion. Overfatigue  is  a  devil  for  man,  but  a  hun- 
dred times  as  fierce  for  woman.  Woman  is  being 
driven  from  the  home.  Once,  varying  with  her 
station,  her  work  equaled  or  surpassed  man's  in 
variety  and  interest.  She  made  clothing  for  the 
family.  There  were  no  dairies,  and  she  it  was 
who  extracted  butter  and  cheese  from  milk.  She 
preserved  food  for  approaching  winter.  What 
intellectual  and  moral  bringing  up  the  children  had 
was  mostly  hers.  Now,  while  the  state  has  been 
taking  over  the  education,  centralized  industry  has 
taken  over  the  daily  routine.  Clothes  are  no 
longer  made  at  home,  and  woman  follows  to  the 
factory.  Dairies  furnish  us  butter,  cheese  and 
milk.  Great  establishments  put  up  soup,  pickles 
and  preserves.      Not   even   the  washing  is   alto- 

[16] 


EMPLOYMENT 


gether  done  at  home,  and  here  Is  where  my  pres- 
ent illustration  comes.  Let  us  not  forget  the  long 
and  wearing  hours  that  woman  often  labored  in 
the  dwelling  which  her  husband  owned.  We  are 
endeavoring,  not  to  show  that  the  world  grows 
worse,  which  would  be  untrue,  but  to  live  up  to 
the  twentieth  century's  possibilities,  and  to  check 
evils  which  the  centralization  of  industry  has  at 
last  put  in  our  control.  Public  employment,  what- 
ever improvement  in  the  general  scale  of  living  it 
has  helped  to  bring  about,  has  by  necessity  its  at- 
tendant harms.  Women,  working  too  hard,  too 
long,  too  near  the  time  when  children  come,  are 
shattered  in  body,  and  the  next  generation  is  in- 
jured in  advance. 

As  Miss  Addams  says  : 

"For  a  hundred  years  England  has  been  legislating  upon 
the  subject  of  unsanitary  workshops,  long  and  exhausting 
hours  of  work,  night  work  for  women,  occupations  in 
which  pregnant  women  may  be  employed,  and  hundreds 
of  other  restrictions  which  we  are  only  beginning  to  con- 
sider objects  of  legislation  here." 

Oregon,  which  has,  thanks  largely  to  the  devo- 
tion and  intelligence  of  W.  S.  U'Ren,  in  social  edu- 
cation kept  a  step  ahead  of  most  sister  states, 
passed  a  law  that  women  should  not  be  forced  to 

[17] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


work  more  than  ten  hours  a  day  in  public  laundries. 
A  moderate  estimate,  surely,  of  the  required  pro- 
tection. The  law  was  attacked,  appealed  to  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  and  its  con- 
stitutionality affirmed.  Illinois  then  passed  a  law 
limiting  the  hours  of  women  in  factories  to  ten. 
The  movers  for  the  law  wanted  eight  hours,  but 
thought  it  best  to  try  for  ten.  The  Illinois  Manu- 
facturers' Association  made  a  furious  endeavor 
to  induce  the  Supreme  Court  of  that  state  not  to 
follow  the  United  States  Supreme  Court's  deci- 
sion in  the  Oregon  case.  The  brief  in  support  of 
this  contention  is  a  curiosity.  Here  are  a  number 
of  its  points: 

1.  It  violates  the  constitution  of  Illinois,  because  it  de- 
prives citizens  of  liberty  and  property  without  due  pro- 
cess of  law. 

2.  It  takes  away  the  constitutional  right  of  the  in- 
dividual to  contract. 

3.  It  is  class  legislation. 

4.  It  is  a  purely  arbitrary  restriction  upon  the  rights 
of  Illinois  citizens  to  control  their  time  and  faculties. 

5.  It  substitutes  the  judgment  of  the  legislature  for  the 
judgment  of  the  employer  and  employee  in  a  matter 
about  which  they  are  competent  to  agree. 

6.  It  is  contrary  to  the  police  power  of  the  State. 

7.  It  is  void   for  ambiguity,  as  the  term  "mechanical 

[18] 


EMPLOYMENT 


establishment"  is  ambiguous  and  of  merely  comparative 
significance. 

8.  It  is  unequal  in  its  operation,  for  it  imposes  upon 
the  employer  a  penalty  for  violation  of  the  statute  and 
imposes  none  upon  the  employee. 

9.  "It  is  unequal,  discriminatory,  and  unjust,  because 
it  restricts  an  employee  from  working  more  than  ten 
hours  a  day,  no  matter  if  she  be  employed  in  more  than 
one  establishment," 

10.  "It  is  void  because  beyond  the  power  of  the  legis- 
lature to  enact." 

Mr.  Louis  D.  Brandeis,  who,  as  the  victor  be- 
fore the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  the  Ore- 
gon case,  was  called  into  the  Illinois  case,  almost 
ignored  legal  precedents;  he  ignored  these  childish 
and  antique  objections;  he  presented  the  court  with 
ample  evidence  that  more  than  ten  hours'  labor  by 
women  in  laundries  was  injurious  to  their  health 
and  morals,  and  to  the  health  and  morals  of  the 
community,  and  he  won. 

The  employment  of  mothers  shortly  before  and 
after  childbirth  is  prohibited  in  a  number  of  Euro- 
pean countries.  A  much-cited  case  is  that  of  M. 
Dollfus,  a  large  employer  of  women  in  Alsace, 
who  required  mothers  to  remain  absent  for  six 
weeks  after  childbirth,  during  which  time  he  paid 
them   full  wages.     The   decrease   in   infant   mor- 

[19] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


tality  in  the  first  year  was  from  40  to  less  than  18 
per  cent.  A  convention  of  wage-earning  women 
in  America  has  put  forward  a  program,  which  in 
its  main  outlines  must  have  the  support  of  all 
employers  who  realize  what  the  health  and  mor- 
ality of  women  in  this  generation  mean  to  the 
efficiency,  character  and  happiness  of  the  next : 

An  eight-hour  workday. 

Elimination  of  night  work  for  women. 

Protected  machinery. 

Sanitary  workshops. 

Separate  toilet-rooms  for  women. 

Seats  for  women,  with  permission  to  use  them  when 
the  nature  of  the  work  permits. 

Prohibition  of  employment  of  women  two  months  be- 
fore and  two  months  after  confinement. 

Pensions  for  mothers  during  lying-in  periods. 

An  increase  in  the  number  of  women  factory  inspec- 
tors, based  on  the  number  of  women  workers  employed 
in  the  state. 

Women  physicians  as  health  inspectors  to  visit  all  shops 
and  factories  where  women  are  employed. 

A  minimum  wage  for  women  in  sweated  industries. 

In  regard  to  the  employment  of  children,  al- 
though an  unfortunate  number  of  unfair  allega- 
tions have  been  made,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
great  injury  is  being  done,  or  that  in  employers 

[20] 


EMPLOYMENT 


often  humanity  yields  to  greed.  We  need  not  dis- 
cuss, in  a  course  of  this  kind,  the  hours  of  children 
on  the  farm,  the  responsibihty  of  parents,  or  the 
relative  healthfulness  of  good  factories  and  bad 
tenements.  We  are  on  safe  ground  when  we  fight 
bad  tenements,  absence  of  schooling  and  destruc- 
tive factory  labor,  all  and  single,  and  condemn 
those  employers  who  have  been  found  blind 
enough  to  oppose  the  passage  of  protective  legis- 
lation, to  evade  it  when  passed,  and  to  endeavor 
to  play  upon  the  fears  of  the  voters  and  the  legis- 
latures by  threatening,  in  case  the  privilege  of 
using  children  was  taken  away  from  them,  to  re- 
move their  factories  to  more  lenient  states.  As  an 
offset  to  such  acts,  we  recall  that  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
the  father  of  the  statesman,  with  no  public  agita- 
tion to  spur  him  on,  introduced  the  first  great 
measure  in  protection  of  factory  children,  because, 
himself  a  mill  owner,  he  was  shocked  by  the 
wrongs  which  passed  before  his  eyes.  This  was 
in  1902,  and  many  an  obscure  Peel  may  be  found 
among  the  high-minded  business  men  of  the 
United  States  in  1910. 

Robert  Owen,  whose  influence  on  philanthropy 
and  social  thought  has  been  so  lasting,  was  the 
manager  of  a  cotton  mill  at  nineteen.     More  than 

[21] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


a  hundred  years  ago  he  successfully  introduced 
standards  of  conduct  to  which  the  world  has  not 
yet  advanced.  He  improved  housing,  furnished 
supplies  at  the  lowest  possible  price,  stimulated 
education  and  thrift,  and  yet  made  money.  His 
partners  were  ordinary  men,  however,  and  they 
conceived  that  more  money  could  be  made  if  such 
expensive  luxuries  as  the  golden  rule  were  laid 
aside.  Owen  therefore  founded  a  new  company, 
with  the  fundamental  agreement  that  five  per  cent, 
return  on  capital  was  sufficient,  the  rest  of  the 
earnings  to  be  free  for  use  in  behalf  of  others. 
Among  the  members  of  this  firm  was  Jeremy 
Bentham.  About  lOO  years  have  passed  since 
that  company  was  started,  but  in  this  year  of 
grace  we  may  say  with  confidence  that  this  willing- 
ness of  capital  itself  to  deal  fairly  with  employees 
and  with  the  public  was  an  example  fertile  in 
moral  progress  that  will  never  be  equaled  by 
libraries,  colleges  or  medical  institutions  paid  for 
out  of  the  proceeds  of  cruelty  and  fraud.  The 
race  of  Robert  Owen  is  not  extinct.  Thousands 
of  business  men  in  America  today  are  moved  by 
similar  ideals,  though  perhaps  lacking  the  brains 
to  put  them  successfully  into  practice.  There  died 
a  few  months  ago  a  man  whose  life  moved  on  a 

[22] 


EMPLOYMENT 


plane  as  high  as  Owen's.  William  H.  Baldwin, 
Jr.,  was  a  gifted  practical  railroad  man.  He 
knew  how  to  make  money,  but  relentlessly,  de- 
spite much  blindness  in  his  competitors,  he  re- 
fused to  make  it  at  the  price  of  cheating  the 
public  or  abusing  his  subordinates.  He  held  ably 
one  position  after  another  in  the  railroad  world, 
without  letting  go  any  of  his  convictions  or 
descending  to  sophistries  with  which  many  of  his 
associates  and  rivals  defended  what  he  knew  was 
wrong.  His  object  was  not  to  weaken  unions,  but 
to  strengthen  them;  not  to  outdo  them,  but  to 
help  them;  not  to  yield  only  what  was  forced  out 
of  him,  but  to  be  ever  thinking  what  more  he 
could  do  to  justify  the  power  he  held. 

When  an  employer  has  learned  the  great  cen- 
tral truth  that  in  fighting  unionism  he  is  fighting 
progress,  he  will  be  in  a  fair  way  to  meet  his 
obligations  fairly.  Here  again  we  must  not  lose 
historical  perspective.  A  century  ago  law,  as  well 
as  public  sentiment  among  the  property-owning 
classes,  was  so  unfavorable  to  organized  labor  that 
in  England  the  slightest  attempt  at  concerted 
action  to  Increase  the  price  of  services  was  visited 
with  severest  penalties.  As  late  as  1834,  six 
Dorchester    laborers    were    sent    as    convicts    to 

[23] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


Botany  Bay,  for  the  mere  act  of  forming  a  labor 
union  which  had  not  even  asked  for  an  advance  of 
wages;  and  the  Statute  of  Laborers  forbade  a 
laborer  to  seek  work  beyond  the  parish  in  which 
he  was  born.  Ancient  guilds  of  artisans  were 
sometimes  destroyed,  and  if  workingmen  merely 
combined,  the  penalty  was  indictment  for  con- 
spiracy. It  is  only  recently  that  any  law  affected 
combinations  of  employers,  for  until  recently  the 
employing  class  has  had  its  way  entirely.  Adam 
Smith  more  than  loo  years  ago  spoke  of  the  tacit 
but  unswerving  social  understanding  among  em- 
ployers to  keep  wages  down.  This  silent  class 
conspiracy  is  enfeebled,  but  not  dead.  A  friend 
of  mine,  one  of  the  most  intelligent  publishers 
alive,  desired  to  make  an  offer  to  a  certain  writer, 
but  was  afraid  it  would  not  be  proper  "to  buy  him 
away"  from  his  employer,  and  many  a  housewife 
feels  the  same  obligation  not  to  raise  wages  for 
domestic  service,  or  inconvenience  her  friends  by 
paying  more  than  her  neighbors  pay. 

I  do  not  pretend  that  this  question  is  easy  in  all 
Its  manifestations,  but  there  are  plenty  of  cases 
of  class  conspiracy  so  flagrant  as  to  allow  no 
doubts.  The  Manufacturers'  Association  of 
America  and  the  Allied  Citizens'   Industrial  Al- 

[24] 


EMPLOYMENT 


liance  form  a  notable  example.  A  number  of  such 
organizations  are  constantly  engaged  in  the  stu- 
pidest warfare  against  unionism,  and  the  spirit  in 
which  they  work  came  under  my  personal  obser- 
vation when  the  trustees  of  the  Lincoln  Farm 
Association,  which  was  founded  to  preserve  to  the 
nation  the  scene  of  much  of  Lincoln's  childhood, 
learned  of  the  fight  being  made  against  it  by  such 
an  organization  because  we  carried  on  our  work 
in  friendly  cooperation  with  the  labor  unions.  The 
following  quotations  from  published  interviews 
coincide  with  the  whole  history  of  such  backward 
organizations. 

By  the  president  of  the  National  Association 
of  Manufacturers  and  of  the  Citizens'  Industrial 
Alliance  of  America: 

"This  is  not  the  proper  time  to  talk  conciliation 

Since  the  principles  and  demands  of  organized  labor  are 
absolutely  untenable  to  those  believing  in  the  individualis- 
tic social  order,  an  attitude  of  conciliation  would  mean 
an  attitude  of  compromise  with  regard  to  fundamental 
convictions.  ....  Neither  is  it  the  time  to  talk  arbitra- 
tion or  joint  agreement.  To  arbitrate  questions  of  wages 
and  hours  is  to  introduce  artificial  methods  of  determining 
what  they  shall  be  and  an  equitable  arrangement  as  to 

either  cannot  be  effected  artificially Arbitration  is 

only  putting  off  the  day  of  reckoning." 

[25] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


By  the  chairman  of  the  Executive  Committee  of 
the  Citizens'  Industrial  AlHance  : 

"No  organization  of  men,  not  excepting  the  Ku  Klux 
Klan,  the  Mafia  or  the  Black  Hand  Society,  has  ever 
produced  such  a  record  of  barbarism  as  has  this  so-called 
organized  labor  society  which,  through  misdirected  sym- 
pathy, apathy  and  indifference,  has  been  permitted  to  grow- 
up  to  cripple  our  industries,  and  to  trample  in  the  dust 
the  natural  and  constitutional  rights  of  our  citizens." 

By  the  same  officer: 

"The  only  way  to  settle  a  controversy  with  organized 
labor  is  to  have  absolutely  no  dealings  with  it." 

A  similar  spirit,  from  these  same  men,  is  shown 
in  a  call  for  their  latest  annual  convention,  in 
which  they  say: 

"Insidious  and  socialistic  doctrines  as  preached,  pub- 
lished and  practiced  by  so-called  labor  leaders  have  of  late 
so  dominated  labor  unions  as  to  preclude  the  exercise  of 
free  and  independent  thought  on  the  part  of  intelligent 
members  of  labor  unions,  and  have  become  a  hindrance 
to  business  and  a  menace  to  society." 

Again: 

"Whereas,  organized  labor  throughout  the  country 
seeks  to  discourage  and  practically  prohibits  membership 
in  the  militia." 

[26] 


EMPLOYMENT 


A  typically  violent  example  of  the  old  anti-union 
species  may  be  seen  also  in  Mr.  Post,  of  Grape- 
nuts  and  Postum  fame,  who  fills  newspapers'  ad- 
vertising columns  with  rhetorical  abuse  of  every- 
thing the  unions  do.  In  all  our  industrial  troubles 
nobody  does  more  harm  than  stupid  hotheads  such 
as  these. 

One  need  not  go  further  back  than  the  Pittsburg 
Survey,  the  Hocking  Valley  troubles  in  Illinois, 
and  the  mining  troubles  in  Pennsylvania,  to  find 
dramatic  instances  of  this  spirit  in  action — of  the 
tyranny  with  which  great  business  magnates  some- 
times use  their  power.  In  the  Pittsburg  troubles 
the  paper  with  which  I  am  associated  happened  to 
be  directly  concerned.  We  made  charges  about 
housing  conditions,  and  responsible  executives  of 
a  great  concern,  in  order  to  meet  these  charges, 
sent  us  solemn  figures  which  turned  out  to  be  ruth- 
less lies.  The  survey  made  a  deep  impression  on 
the  country.  It  showed  men  compelled  to  work 
at  blast  furnaces  seven  days  a  week,  and  brought 
us  nearer  to  the  intelligent  legislation  which  in 
France,  Italy  and  Canada  has  forbidden  the  seven- 
day  week.  Imagine  working  violently  twelve 
hours  a  day,  seven  days  In  the  week,  and  hoping 
to  find  any  higher  value  In  this  life.     The  wages 

[27] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


were  found  to  be  so  low  also  that  a  normal  Ameri- 
can standard  of  living  was  impossible,  but  a  little 
while  later  the  Steel  Trust  was  taking  part  in  con- 
structing a  tariff  to  protect  its  infant  industry,  a 
tariff  under  the  shelter  of  which  had  been  reared 
the  mightiest  fortunes  In  history.  The  companies 
in  the  steel  district  are  also  continually  busy  in 
stimulating  Immigration,  as  a  weapon  to  beat  down 
wages  and  the  scale  of  living.  Mr,  Edward  T. 
Devine,  speaking  before  the  American  Sociologi- 
cal Society  and  the  American  Economic  Associa- 
tion, was  not  too  severe  when  he  said: 

"The  contrast — which  does  not  become  blurred  by 
familiarity  with  detail,  but  on  the  contrary  becomes  more 
vivid  as  the  outlines  are  filled  in — the  contrast  between 
the  prosperity  on  the  one  hand  of  the  most  prosperous  of 
all  the  communities  of  our  western  civilization,  with  its 
vast  natural  resources,  the  generous  fostering  of  govern- 
ment, the  human  energy,  the  technical  development,  the 
gigantic  tonnage  of  the  mines  and  mills,  the  enormous 
capital  of  which  the  bank  balances  afford  an  indication; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  neglect  of  life,  of  health,  of 
physical  vigor,  even  of  the  industrial  efficiency  of  the  in- 
dividual. Certainly  no  community  before  in  America  or 
Europe  has  ever  had  such  a  surplus,  and  never  before  has 
a  great  community  applied  what  it  had  so  meagerly  to  the 
rational  purposes  of  human  life.  Not  by  gifts  of  libraries, 
galleries,  technical  schools  and   parks,  but  by  the  cessa- 

[28] 


EMPLOYMENT 


tion  of  toil  one  day  in  seven  and  sixteen  hours  in  the 
twenty-four,  by  the  increase  of  wages,  by  the  sparing  of 
lives,  by  the  prevention  of  accidents,  and  by  raising  the 
standards  of  domestic  life,  should  the  surplus  come  back 
to  the  people  of  the  community  in  which  it  is  created." 

The  report  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  upon  con- 
ditions at  the  Bethlehem  Steel  Works  showed  simi- 
lar oppression.  There  we  beheld  even  a  thirteen- 
hour  day.  A  large  percentage  of  the  laborers 
earned  but  twelve  and  one  half  cents  per  hour, 
and  some  only  twelve  cents.  For  some  of  the 
seven-day  men  Sunday  was  not  considered  over- 
time. Figures  like  this,  however  horrible,  are 
needed  to  keep  the  conscience  of  the  people  alive 
and  their  minds  fixed  upon  the  rights  of  the  over- 
ridden many.  The  following  graphic  picture  is 
given  by  Holyoake  in  "The  Cooperative  Move- 
ment Today" : 

"When  in  America  I  passed  by  a  melancholy  mountain 
known  as  'Starvation  Point,'  up  which  the  Iroquois  In- 
dians drove  their  Illinois  rivals  and  surrounded  the  base, 
while  the  Illinois  tribe  above  were  all  starved  to  death. 
In  Spring  Valley,  near  this  spot,  capitalists  recently 
opened  mines  and  invited  settlers  by  offers  of  good  wages. 
Miners  flocked  there,  bought  lots  of  the  company,  and 
built  houses.  A  township  of  some  thousands  arose.  For 
a  workman  to  leave  meant  the  loss  of  his  home,  which 

[29] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


he  could  neither  let  nor  sell.  If  the  men  struck,  their 
employers  could  confiscate  their  dwellings.  Then  their 
wages  were  suddenly  reduced.  The  men  did  strike.  They 
tried  to  get  employment  at  the  nearest  mines.  All  the 
owners  were  in  the  capitalist  ring,  and  no  work  could  be 
had.  The  whole  town  was  starved  into  submission,  as 
completely  and  pitilessly  as  the  Indians  on  the  mountain. 
The  miners  had  been  lured  into  a  trap.  Law  gave  the 
capitalist  this  power — there  was  no  law  to  deliver  the 
workers.  Those  who  said  this  was  infamous  were  ac- 
cused by  the  capitalists  of  setting  class  against  class." 

As  Professor  Giddings  puts  it,  an  employer 
may  say,  "I  will  buy  labor  at  the  lowest  prices  at 
which  men  who  are  nearest  starvation  will  con- 
sent to  work,"  or  he  may  say,  "I  will  pay  my 
help  the  highest  wages  that  I  can  afford."  Simi- 
larly he  may  say,  "I  will  force  upon  them  the 
longest  hours,"  or  'T  will  make  hours  as  favorable 
to  them  as  I  can  afford."  The  first  spirit  means 
progressive  degradation  of  labor  and,  in  the  view 
of  many  observers,  ultimate  destruction  of  the 
employer's  profits;  although  I  personaly  feel  safer 
in  relying  upon  the  human  and  moral  appeal  than 
upon  the  argument  that  virtue  will  finally  be  re- 
paid in  dollars  to  the  employer.  Professor  Gid- 
dings points  out  that  there  was  a  steady  discour- 
agement of  labor  and  impairment  of  efficiency  in 

[30] 


EMPLOYMENT 


England  during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  under  the  teaching  that  unmitigated  sel- 
fishness was  economically  desirable,  and  that  un- 
der the  opposite  rule  the  laborer  is  encouraged 
and  stimulated,  his  standard  of  living  is  raised, 
he  creates  more  wealth  for  conversion  into  capi- 
tal, and  this  accumulated  capital,  by  increasing 
the  demand  for  labor,  tends  further  to  raise 
wages.  A  recent  report  on  national  vitality  by 
the  Committee  of  One  Hundred  on  National 
Health,  declares  that  the  present  working  day, 
from  a  physiological  standpoint,  is  too  long,  and 
keeps  the  majority  of  men  and  women  in  a  contin- 
ual state  of  overfatigue.  It  starts  a  vicious  circle, 
leading  to  the  craving  for  means  of  deadening 
fatigue,  thus  inducing  drunkenness  and  other  ex- 
cesses. "Experiments  in  reducing  the  working 
day  show  a  great  improvement  in  the  physical  ef- 
ficiency of  laborers,  and  in  many  cases  result  in 
even  increasing  their  output  sufficiently  to  com- 
pensate the  employer  for  the  shorter  day."  That 
shorter  hours  pay  directly  in  actually  increased 
efficiency,  is,  undoubtedly,  true  in  many  cases. 
One  hundred  years  ago  fourteen  and  fifteen  hours 
were  not  uncommon.  The  first  legal  limitation 
was  under  President  Van  Buren,  in   i  840,  to  ten 

[  =51  ] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


hours.  About  thirty  years  ago  it  was  lowered  by 
Congress  to  eight  hours.  Meantime,  the  produc- 
tiveness of  labor  has  steadily  increased,  but  how 
much  of  the  increase  is  due  to  shorter  hours  and 
how  much  in  spite  of  it,  is  the  subject  of  debate. 
At  Liege  it  was  decided  that  shortening  the  day 
gradually  from  eleven  hours  to  seven  and  a  half 
resulted  in  every  case  in  an  increase  of  output. 
The  Solvay  Process  Company  of  Syracuse  in 
1892  introduced  three  eight-hour  shifts  in  place 
of  the  two  previous  shifts  of  thirteen  hours,  and 
found  that  this  change  was  actually  profitable. 
Many  similar  cases  might  be  cited,  but  it  seems 
to  me  unsafe  to  look  at  the  question  entirely  as 
selfish.  Sometimes  it  will  work  out  right  from 
the  mercenary  point  of  view,  and  sometimes  not; 
certainly  it  is  right  from  the  social  standpoint. 
The  step  ahead  may  or  may  not  be  profitable  for 
the  individual  employer,  but  it  is  obviously  of  the 
greatest  advantage  to  the  community. 

Often  the  employer  has  carried  selfishness  to 
the  point  where  it  was  obviously  unprofitable, 
as  in  the  case,  about  twenty  years  ago,  cited  by 
Holyoake : 

"To  force  upon  railway  workmen  long  hours  of  labor, 
detrimental  to  their  health  and  to  the  public  safety,  Scot- 

[32] 


EMPLOYMENT 


tish  railway  directors  wasted  last  year  more  money  than 
would  have  endowed  all  the  men  with  moderate  annui- 
ties." 

Such  cases  grow  rarer,  however,  and  more  truth 
inheres  every  year  in  the  remark  of  a  recent  ob- 
server that  the  business  world  In  general  resembles 
not  piracy  so  much  as  traffic  on  the  high  seas, 
where  there  are  many  perils  of  storm  and  colli- 
sion, and  many  disasters  wrought  by  treachery 
and  rashness,  but  where,  on  the  whole,  strong  men 
are  trained,  and  the  work  of  the  world  is  bravely 
done.  "Nothing,"  to  be  sure,  "is  more  timorous 
than  a  million  dollars,  except  two  million  dol- 
lars," but  this  conservatism  of  capital  is  not  all 
evil,  and  if  it  is  infused  with  sufficient  sincerity 
and  human  sympathy  it  is  strength.  Edward  A. 
Filene  of  Boston,  who  in  his  own  large  establish- 
ment has  put  many  advanced  ideas  into  operation, 
observes  that  "ideas  go  to  the  scrap  heap  about 
as  often  as  machines,"  and  it  is  a  mark  of  health 
in  the  present  age  that  it  shows  unusual  willing- 
ness to  change  both. 

Sometimes  one  man  can  do  much.  Let  me  cite 
as  an  illustration  the  busy  lawyer  who  won  the 
Oregon  and  Illinois  cases  for  shorter  hours,  who 
as  these  lectures  are  written  out  has  induced  gar- 

[33] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


ment  workers  and  their  employers  to  a  new  modi- 
fication of  the  open  shop  idea,  and  who  put  forth 
the  first  American  plea  for  savings  bank  insur- 
ance, with  a  convincing  explanation  of  the  benefits 
that  the  laboring  classes  would  derive.  Taken  up 
first  by  ex-Governor  Douglas  and  a  few  other 
large  employers,  this  plan,  now  in  operation  but  a 
short  time,  has  already  shown  what  a  genuinely 
valuable  contribution  it  is  toward  the  solution  of 
the  lowering  problem  of  the  workingman's  old 
age.  For  the  man  who  labors  with  his  hands  age 
comes  early  and  bears  many  threats.  At  forty, 
when  the  professional  man  has  just  mastered  his 
resources,  the  laborer  is  frequently  of  so  much 
diminished  value  that  he  is  in  danger  of  being 
thrown  aside.  The  lawyer,  the  clergyman,  the 
politician,  the  journalist,  may  be  as  useful  at  sixty 
as  at  thirty. 

A  condition  of  industry  in  which  a  man  ceases 
to  be  useful  comparatively  early  obviously  offers 
bitter  old-age  problems  to  the  majority.  England 
has  recently  seen  herself  compelled  to  introduce 
a  system  of  old-age  pensions,  of  doubtful  bearing 
on  the  fibre  and  p^^p.erlty  of  her  people.  The 
contributory  system  of  pensioning,  by  compulsory 
saving,  which  works  so  well  in  Germany,  would 

[34] 


EMPLOYMENT 


be  impossible  with  our  political  ideas  and  institu- 
tions, and  the  plan  put  into  force  in  Massachusetts 
rests  on  the  substitution  of  education  and  persua- 
sion for  the  German  force.  It  requires  the 
cooperation  of  savings  banks  and  employers.  The 
banks  offer  old-age  insurance  at  cost,  and  the  em- 
ployers constantly  and  in  many  ways  remind  their 
employees  of  the  advantages  of  taking  out  such 
insurance.  The  result,  after  less  than  two  years 
of  trial,  is  a  great  saving  to  the  workingmen,  not 
only  of  Massachusetts,  but  all  over  the  country,  as 
the  installment  insurance  companies,  like  the  Pru- 
dential, have  been  compelled  to  lower  their  rates 
to  meet  the  savings  bank  competition.  So  great 
a  victory,  over  so  appalling  a  fact,  won  with  such 
simplicity,  helps  us  to  believe  that  much  social 
progress  may  be  gained  without  fundamental 
changes  in  the  structure  of  society.  As  a  commit- 
tee of  the  Boston  Chamber  of  Commerce  has 
just  said: 

"What  is  needed  is  the  establishment  of  agencies  with 
employers,  and  where  sufficient  interest  and  business  pos- 
sibilities exist,  the  opening  of  an  insurance  department  by  ^  a^^^- 
the  local  savings  banks.     Notle^^jg/mtg^0$Fu\e  prose- 


cution of  a  campaigt^lll^PBPror^tnat  will  convince  the 
working  people  of  t^^esirability,  cheapness  and  safety  of 

[35] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


savings  banks  insurance.  Such  education  will  encourage 
thrift,  and  counteract  the  unfortunate  drift  toward  non- 
contributory  old-age  insurance,  which  has  been  adopted  in 
England  under  peculiar  economic  and  political  conditions, 
which  do  not  exist  in  this  country." 

The  enlightenment  which  Massachusetts  has 
shown,  toward  both  political  and  economic  prob- 
lems, is  a  safer  example  for  Americans  to  emulate 
than  are  ideas  imported  whole  from  foreign 
lands.  At  the  very  last  session  of  the  legislature 
Massachusetts  passed  an  act  compelling  employ- 
ers, when  advertising  for  help  in  times  of  labor 
troubles,  to  mention  any  strike  or  lockout  In  prog- 
ress in  their  shops  or  factories,  and  thus  refrain 
from  luring  workmen  from  distant  homes  in  igno- 
rance of  what  they  have  to  face.  The  more  such 
definite  kinds  of  Injustice,  big  or  little,  are  made 
impossible,  the  safer  we  shall  be  from  convulsions 
based  upon  despair.  A  realization  of  such  truths 
is  growing  rapidly.  Large  employers  are  coming 
rapidly  to  accept  some  form  not  only  of  accident 
insurance,  but  also  of  old-age  pensions,  often  with- 
out contributions  from  the  employees.  The  "pluck 
me"  store,  In  which  the  employee  was  compelled  to 
buy  at  ruinous  iost  the  necessities  of  life  from  his 
employer.  Is  ^^^^as  a  crime.     "Welfare  work," 

[36] 


EMPLOYMENT 


a  term  covering  the  general  comfort,  health  and 
enjoyment  of  employees,  Is  making  rapid  progress. 
Could  the  following  paragraph,  ten  years  ago, 
have  emerged  from  a  body  like  that  which  actu- 
ally has  recently  drawn  It  up — a  committee  of 
which  the  president  of  a  railway  was  one  of  the 
two  members? 

"It  cannot  be  denied  that  in  recent  years,  notwithstand- 
ing the  vast  accumulation  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  a 
privileged  few,  there  has  been  no  corresponding  gain  to 
labor;  that  our  modern  competitive  industrial  system  re- 
sults in  conditions  which  are  essentially  un-Christian,  and 
unjust  to  the  men  who  produce  the  wealth  in  which  they 
so  unequally  share;  that  in  every  industrial  community, 
poverty  due  to  insufficient  wages  and  uncertainty  of  em- 
ploj'ment  is  to  a  large  extent  responsible  for  the  existing 
discontent,  crime,  immorality  and  alienation  from  religion, 
and  that  the  Church  is  to  a  large  degree  identified  with 
the  capitalistic  class  and  that  its  influence  is  used  to  up- 
hold the  existing  economic  sj-stem." 

"Welfare  work"  Includes  so  much  detail  that 
an  outline  of  It  might  well  fill  a  volume.  Each 
establishment  presents  a  separate  problem.  Such 
study  Is  required  that  there  Is  a  growing  belief 
that  the  "welfare  manager"  Is  a  necessity — one 
man,  that  is,  who  is  not  responsible  for  the  money- 
making  side  of  the  business,  and  whose  duty  It  Is 

[37] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


to  study  the  needs  and  wishes  of  the  employees. 
From  bathing  facilities  and  fresh  air  to  libraries, 
music  and  courses  of  instruction,  it  is  his  business 
to  make  the  working  day  itself  a  little  better  worth 
the  living.  Shading  Into  this  field  are  all  things 
which  tend  toward  education,  equipment,  stimula- 
tion of  ambition  and  the  power  of  rising — as,  for 
example,  the  "Top-Notch"  system,  or  special  op- 
portunities for  advancement  given  to  those  who 
do  best  In  their  particular  divisions.  Morality 
also  is  Included — as  where.  In  some  establish- 
ments, the  girls  leave  half  an  hour  earlier  than 
the  men.  A  free  physician  is  becoming  more  and 
more  usual.  Opportunities  for  diversion,  whether 
in  intellectual  directions  or  In  such  amusements  as 
dancing  and  games,  are  being  widely  Introduced. 
In  some  cases  where  the  workmen  are  brought  to 
a  town  merely  by  the  needs  of  some  special  busi- 
ness, prizes  are  offered  by  the  conductors  of  that 
business  for  the  most  attractive  homes.  A  few 
factories  (where  the  nature  of  the  work  permits 
it)  employ  men  or  women  to  read  aloud  during 
working  hours;  others  have  pianos.  In  certain 
employments,  such  as  railway  engineering,  rest- 
rooms  are  of  the  first  importance,  especially  be- 
cause an  attractive  place  where  a  man  can  read, 

[38] 


EMPLOYMENT 


play  games  or  sleep,  will  prove  to  be  the  greatest 
rival  of  the  saloon.  Lunch  hours  are  becoming 
longer;  ventilation  is  becoming  better,  and  the 
result  is  so  marked  that  in  one  telephone  company, 
for  instance,  after  a  new  ventilating  system  was 
put  in,  the  number  of  days  of  work  lost  by  its  sixty 
women  employees  was  cut  in  half.  The  relation 
of  fatigue  to  illness  comes  within  the  welfare  field, 
and  w^hile  with  regard  to  fatigue  the  length  of 
hours  is  the  most  important  consideration,  all 
steps  which  make  work  more  interesting  make  it 
physically  easier  to  endure. 

Welfare  work  can  hardly  be  successful  unless  it 
is  democratic.  Progress  in  comfort  is  looked 
upon  by  employees  as  mere  bribery  if  it  is  used  as 
an  excuse  for  long  hours,  unsteady  employment, 
low  wages  or  weak  unions.  Some  of  the  em- 
ployers who  have  shown  the  greatest  intelligence 
in  relief  and  welfare  work  have  been  persistent 
enemies  of  the  union,  and  no  employer  who  looks 
upon  unionism  as  an  evil,  or  upon  a  weak  union 
as  more  desirable  than  a  strong  one,  is  capable  of 
taking  a  place  in  the  economic  progress  of  our  day. 
The  time  for  bribery  has  gone.  The  time  for 
justice  has  arrived.  The  spirit  of  democracy  is 
passing    into    industry.       The    principles    of    the 

[39] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


Christian  religion,  on  their  most  fertile  side,  are 
being  translated  from  far-away  abstractions  into 
commanding  daily  guides;  and  best  among  them 
is  the  Golden  Rule. 


[40] 


CHAPTER  II. 

Labor. 

Mr.  James  Bryce,  in  a  speech  recently,  said 
that  the  greatest  unsolved  problem  in  the  world 
is  to  find  a  satisfactory  relation  between  labor  and 
capital.  New  aspects  of  this  complicated  problem 
arise  with  every  development  in  our  ethical  ideas. 
Once  the  duties  of  labor  were  regarded  by  the 
educated  as  exclusively  toward  the  employer.  An 
illuminating  fact  of  recent  history  is  the  awaken- 
ing of  the  laborer  to  his  duties  toward  his  class. 
Even  the  isolated  rich  are  coming  to  understand 
that  things  are  good  which  help  the  laborer  to 
greater  value  in  his  life.  Charles  William  Eliot, 
in  his  much-discussed  lecture  on  the  religion  of  the 
future,  shows  the  belief  that  one  of  the  leading 
obligations  will  be  so  to  act  that  the  world's  work 
may  be  made  less  dismal.  Once  in  the  face  of  ex- 
tensive evil  we  talked  about  the  will  of  provi- 
dence.    Now  we  mitigate  the  evil. 

No  single  force  has  done  more  to  educate  us, 
poor  and  rich,  than  unions.  "Association,"  said 
the  Bishop  of  Durham,  "for  good  or  evil  is  the 
characteristic  of  our  age."     In  labor,  association 

[41] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


has  done  so  much  good  that  the  Incidental  evil 
is  comparatively  small.  The  union  has  been  called 
the  worker's  public  school.  It  is  more.  It  is  the 
first  device  in  the  world  by  which  has  been  intro- 
duced a  fair  dispute  between  poor  and  rich.  Prac- 
tically it  is  new,  although  in  other  forms  it  has 
existed.  Some  of  Cicero's  most  violent  diatribes 
are  against  the  trades  unions  of  his  time.  Strikes, 
which  have  been  the  militant  expressions  of  the 
desires  of  labor,  are  old  in  history.  When  the 
Children  of  Israel  were  instructed  by  Pharaoh  to 
make  bricks  without  straw,  and  to  labor  without 
rest,  they  went  on  the  first  general  strike.  The 
slave  insurrections,  about  which  we  read,  but 
which  are  more  numerous  than  would  be  indicated 
by  ordinary  history,  were  the  rebellion  of  the 
laborers  against  conditions.  The  laborer  has 
always  been  at  a  disadvantage  in  these  contests 
with  his  employer,  often  he  has  been  desperate, 
and  until  recently  he  has  felt  that  any  arrangement 
which  he  could  come  to  was  likely  to  result  in  his 
harm,  partly  on  account  of  his  inferiority  in  educa- 
tion and  experience;  partly  on  account  of  his  lack 
of  that  formal  or  informal  organization  which 
binds  business  men  together;  and  partly  because, 
lacking  capital  on  which  to  live  during  the  contest, 

[42] 


LABOR 


he  was  not  able  to  hold  out  for  terms  as  long  as 
the  employer.     There  is  a  certain  poem  by  Lear: 

"There  was  a  young  woman  in  Niger, 
Went  a-ride  on  the  back  of  a  tiger, 
They  returned  from  their  ride, 
With  the  lady  inside, 
And  a  smile  on  the  face  of  the  tiger." 

Holyoake  tells  us  that  the  sweated  workmen  of 
East  London  say: 

"There  was  a  workman  of  Whitechapelist, 
Went  out  on  the  back  of  a  capitalist  ; 

They  returned  from  their  ride 

With  the  workman  inside, 
And  content  in  the  face  of  the  capitalist." 

The  stronger  the  union,  the  greater  will  be  the 
possibility  of  removing  inequality  and  distrust,  the 
fairer  the  terms,  and  the  more  stable  the  under- 
standings. Without  unions,  labor  can  do  nothing; 
with  weak  unions  It  can  do  little. 

In  a  general  discussion  of  the  duties  of  labor, 
the  questions  which  would  have  been  among  the 
most  promment  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  sink 
now  Into  the  background.  The  size  of  the  drink 
bill  Is  one  of  the  greatest  burdens  In  most  civilized 
countries,  perhaps  most  of  all  in  Great  Britain. 

[43] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


It   is   a   burden  even  with  us,   and  it   falls   most 
heavily   on   the  laboring  class.     The  poor  have 
their  forms  of  the  evil  of  luxury,  and  drink  with 
them  stands  first.     What  is  wasted  by  this  vice 
alone  would  be  enough,  used  aright,  to  bring  com- 
fort,  education,   industrial   freedom   to   all  man- 
kind.    The   most   direct   expense  may  be   in  the 
enormous  percentage  of  the  productive  power  of 
the  country  that  is  wasted,  but  a  still  heavier  loss 
lies  in  decreased  efficiency.    If  the  duty  of  laborers 
and  labor  unions  to  agitate  for  temperance  is  not 
here  brought  forward,  it  is  not  because  it  is  not 
one   of  the   most   important   tasks   ever   imposed 
upon  the  world  or  any  class,  but  merely  because 
labor  unions  so  thoroughly  understand   and   are 
working  so  persistently.      In  most  unions  intem- 
perance is  now  regarded  as  one  of  the  cardinal 
sins,  and  the  attitude  of  the  unions,  combined  with 
the  demands  of  the  public  and  of  employers,  is 
resulting  in  real  progress  toward  temperance. 

Another  question,  which  is  among  the  most 
serious,  fails  to  require  argument  from  the  labor 
point  of  view  because  the  unions  have  been  so 
steadily  on  the  right  side.  To  nobody,  of  course, 
does  the  laborer  owe  more  than  to  his  child,  but 
he  knows  this  as  well  as  we  can  tell  him.     Protec- 

[44] 


LABOR 


tion  of  the  young  from  work  which  stunts  their 
growth  and  limits  their  later  power  may  need  to 
be  argued  to  the  employer,  but  the  elimination  of 
child  labor  is  a  step  for  which  the  unions  have 
consistently  stood,  as  they  have  also  consistently 
stood  for  the  co-relative  duty  of  providing  educa- 
tion and  care  for  children  over  a  sufficient  number 
of  years. 

Another  step,  almost  won,  is  in  the  point  of 
view  of  labor  unions,  and  especially  labor  leaders, 
toward  violence.  It  cannot  with  truth  be  said 
that  the  actual  belief  of  the  majority  of  laboring 
men  corresponds  with  the  statements  put  forward 
for  publication,  but  it  approaches  nearer  to  them 
with  each  instructive  year.  It  is  no  doubt  easier 
to  unionize  those  occupations,  like  the  building 
trades,  in  which  violence  is  easy  to  commit.  The 
part  that  violence  has  played  in  the  progress  of 
the  race  is  a  matter  about  which  it  is  difficult  to  be 
safely  dogmatic.  Frequently  it  is  stated,  as  it 
was,  I  remember,  by  Mr.  John  Hay,  that  "assas- 
sination never  changed  the  face  of  history."  In 
reality,  no  historian  has  the  power  to  say  to  what 
extent  the  progress  of  humanity  was  affected  by 
violence  in  the  French  Revolution,  favorably  and 
for  loss.      In   the   female   suffrage   debate   which 

[45] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


Great  Britain  is  undergoing,  the  advocates  of  mili- 
tant tactics  have  no  difficulty  in  showing  that 
roughness  has  accompanied  most  extensions  of 
male  suffrage.  Although  this  philosophic  doubt 
is  admitted,  there  is  a  constant  effort  toward  peace- 
ful methods  and  a  constant  diminution  of  violence, 
since  nearly  everybody  realizes  that  our  permanent 
industrial  victories  are  to  be  won  by  reason,  study, 
spiritual  inspiration. 

We  need  not  linger  over  a  point  so  obvious, 
although  so  recent,  as  recognition  of  the  union. 
Employers  who  fight  it  still  are  behind  their  day. 
As  a  member  of  Parliament,  who  is  himself  an 
employer,  said: 

"Without  unions  there  was  a  spasmodic  demand  for 
labor  at  any  price,  and  a  sudden  fall  to  the  lowest  of 
wages  men  can  take.  Industry  was  demoralized,  and 
there  was  no  healthy  competition  among  employers,  mak- 
ing it  difficult  for  even  a  just  and  generous  employer  to 
do  right — a  situation  which  has  been  done  away  with  by 
the  progress  of  the  unions." 

Between  the  contestants  stands  the  consumer, 
and  his  rights  become  clearer.  Canada  is  ahead 
of  the  United  States  in  that,  without  arbitrary 
settlement,  she  has  conserved  the  right  of  the  pub- 
lic without  hardship  to  either  disputant.     It  was 

[46] 


J*L' 


LABOR 


perhaps  necessary  that  the  two  great  industrial 
forces  should  be  allowed  to  fight  out  their  differ- 
ences before  the  time  could  arrive  to  intervene 
with  public  rights;  as  in  the  war  between  Japan 
and  Russia  intervention  seemed  impracticable  at 
first.  No  country  has  yet  gone  so  far  as  to  prevent 
strikes.  Compulsory  arbitration,  where  it  has 
been  tried,  has  not  succeeded.  The  Canadian 
principle  is  to  force  the  conflicting  parties  to  sub- 
mit differences  to  a  board,  not  of  arbitration,  but 
of  investigation.  It  looks  fully  into  the  facts  and 
merely  makes  recommendations,  and  no  strike  is 
permitted  until  the  results  of  this  investigation 
have  been  put  before  the  public.  The  consequence 
is  that  if  either  employer  or  employees  refuse  to 
abide  by  the  decision,  the  party  refusing  accepts 
public  disapproval. 

With  regard  to  the  rights  of  labor  in  enforc- 
ing its  demands,  legal  standards  are  changing  rap- 
idly. Up  to  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century  a  strike  was  considered  a  conspiracy,  a 
view  derived  from  the  English  common  law,  now 
in  England  changed  by  statute.  On  the  other 
hand,  while  the  English  law  is  becoming  more 
favorable  toward  the  liberty  of  labor  to  fight  for 
its  rights,  it  is  also  putting  certain  obligations  on 

[47] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGSXSS 


it.  Frigls'nn  nov,  under  the  TsS-^  sJe  case,  forces 
unions  to  be  resr>on5:ble  f cr  some  of  the  Tiolence 
commitred  bx  nnembers,  hat  tids  qwjJiw  cunat 
be  looked  upon  as  dosed. 

Apart  from  the  "sray  it  is  earned  oat,  the  tca- 
denrr  is  tovard  the  belief  expressed  br  Jobn 
Stnarr  MUl,  that  **the  strike  is  irrcM^  whenever  it 
is  foolish-"  It  is  both  -wTong  and  fooEsh  idiaierer 
die  qoesdons  at  issue  are  oi  z  kind  on  idBcii  lea- 
soatalaie  men  ougin  to  be  able  to  agree,  e^wdalhr 
when  the  situation  r'f?*fd  i?  one  ■srhicii  imposes 
hardships  upoTi  the  ^  —  _  ^. 

Along  -srith  the  general  srmpatiiT  for  die  trades 
imions  and  the  obieds  "whidi  diey  hsrt  been  seek- 
ing, there  has  increased  also  a  deamess  about  die 
ultimprf  ethical  standards  to  irhidi  they  sfaoold 
be  er  :      -   zed.    As  Holyoake  puts  it : 

■  j_  r^jtr  unioaiss  strike  atg^liin  had  TnamTtafxmeir — 
ihcT  I-  :  '  rrtr  yet  srmci  agEinst  doing  bad  -work  and 
Tnat-T-ng  •^:  -   .  :erial^" 

This  li.T^iz^z  znzj  not  be  endrelT  fair,  ana  ii  is 
onlr  partly  co^siszeziz  -srith  Pressdent  Hadler's 
fSsttxunent : 

ni£T  are  j^  xDore  omBgnrf  wtA  ptpaoBO^B^  s^am 


LABOR 

We,  the  public  watching  the  contest  between 
these  forces,  have  decided  that  in  the  end  there 
must  be  consummated,  not  only  an  arrangement 
which  shall   prevent  interruption  to   production, 
and  therefore  penalizing  the  world,  but  a  return 
to    what   workmanship    has   lost   in   solidity   and 
honesty.     Production  on  a  large  scale  probably 
means  that  we  shall  never  get  back  to  the  exqui- 
site workmanship  of  the  past,  for  the  price  of 
labor  cannot  again  be  lowered,  and  there  is  no 
indication  that  an  average  citizen  will  be  willing  to 
pay  several  times  as  much  for  a  chair  beautifally 
modeled  by  hand  as  for  one  almost  like  it  turned 
out  at  Grand  Rapids.    It  may  be  doubted  whether 
the  unions  have,  or  can  have,  much  to  do  with 
this  question,  which  must  in  the  end  be  settled  by 
public  demand.        In  one   respect,   however,  the 
unions  are  open  to  criticism  on  this  ground  of 
lowering  quality,  and  that  is  in  their  effort  to  limit 
apprentices.     The  worid  needs  a  revival  of  die 
apprentice    system,    modified   to   our   day.      The 
laborers  have  taken  a  position  toward   appren- 
tices which  is  as  faulty  as  that  of  the  manufac- 
turers.    Where  the  manufacturer  has  wished  to 
use   so-called  apprentices   as   a   cloak  for   cheap 
labor,  to  drive  out  higher  forms  of  skill  and  re- 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


duce  wages,  the  laborer,  seeking  the  power  of  mo- 
nopoly, has  been  unwilling  to  have  sufficient  well- 
trained  apprentices  to  meet  the  public  need.  Few 
problems  in  industry  today  are  more  difficult  than 
the  question  of  how  to  have  a  sufficient  supply  of 
skilled  labor  without  forcing  down  the  wage 
standard.  Some  of  our  best  thinkers,  like  Presi- 
dent Eliot,  incline  toward  the  view  that  it  is  an 
outrage  to  limit  in  any  way  the  number  of  skilled 
workmen,  and  this,  as  an  ultimate  ideal,  is  un- 
answerable. There  ought  to  be  free  trade 
schools  and  free  apprentice  systems  enough  to 
furnish  skill  for  everybody;  but  as  an  immediate 
question  it  cannot  be  so  easily  solved,  nor  can  it 
be  solved  at  all  without  conscientious  refusal  on 
the  part  of  employers  to  betray  the  apprentice  or 
trade-school  system.  The  leading  economist  of 
England  is  of  the  opinion  that  the  apprentice 
question  can  never  be  solved,  either  by  the  labor- 
ers or  by  their  employers,  but  that  the  public  will 
have  to  step  in  and  fix  the  terms.  If  all  employers 
are  to  continue  as  unfair  as  some  have  proved 
themselves  toward  the  Milwaukee  trade  school, 
for  example,  Marshall's  view  may  be  justified; 
but  the  world  is  learning. 

One  of  the  sharpest  criticisms  left  against  or- 

^  [  50  ]  V 


LABOR 


ganized  labor  today  deals  with  the  boycott.  Not 
long  ago  the  newspapers  reported  that  the  labor 
unions  of  St.  Louis  objected  bitterly  to  Mr.  Taft's 
attending  a  ball  game,  and  the  ground  on  which 
this  cordial  lack  of  welcome  was  manifested  was 
that  the  ball  grounds  had  not  been  built  by  union 
labor.  Mr.  Taft's  labor  record  in  detail  I  shall 
not  discuss,  but  his  unpopularity  with  unions 
brings  out  some  salient  unsettled  questions.  The 
President  not  long  ago,  in  connection  with  the 
Bethlehem  works  and  their  contracts  with  the 
government,  took  the  position  that  all  the  United 
States  government,  in  regard  to  its  own  purchases, 
should  ask  was,  whether  it  was  getting  from  the 
company  a  satisfactory  product;  it  could  not  wise- 
ly ask  whether  that  product  was  turned  out  with- 
out wrongs  to  the  men.  As  public  thought  exists 
at  the  present  moment,  the  President  is  right. 
The  executive  cannot  use  his  purchasing  power  to 
settle  industrial  questions  not  before  him.  Sen- 
tences spoken  by  the  President  in  this  connection 
put  one  side  of  the  controversy  clearly: 

"  ....  I  am  utterly  opposed  to  the  principle  of  a 
boycott.  Every  issue  ought  to  be  settled  on  its  own 
merits.  If  the  Bethlehem  work  isn't  up  to  contract,  then 
the  government  ought  not   to  give  the  contracts  to  the 

[51] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


companies.  If  it  is,  then  the  contracts  ought  to  go  to 
them  without  regard  to  controversies  that  Bethlehem  may 
have  with  third  persons,  whether  the  third  persons  be 
customers  or  employees There  is  no  relation  be- 
tween the  one  controversy  and  the  other,  because — I  say 
that  with  emphasis — because  to  hold  otherwise  is  to  in- 
troduce into  government  methods  the  system  upon  which 
boycott  rests,  to  wit,  that  third  persons  are  to  be  involved 
against  their  will  in  a  controversy  with  respect  to  which 
they  have  no  natural  relation," 

The  comment  of  Mr.  Gompers  on  this  position 
gives  the  labor  union  view: 

"According  to  the  President's  position  it  is  not  the  gov- 
ernment's concern  how  brutally  and  inhumanly  the 
workers  of  a  concern  are  treated;  it  matters  not  whether 
American  workers  are  displaced  by  the  worst  element  of 
foreign  labor,  coolie,  Jap,  or  Slav,  whether  Americanism 
may  be  possible  of  development  among  a  company's  em- 
ploj^ees ;  it  is  simply  a  question  of  product.  So  long  as  the 
product  is  acceptable  the  producers  may  be  damned  for 
all  time  in  the  production." 

A  committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
which  investigated  the  Homestead  strike,  said  in 
its  report : 

"If  the  washerwoman  of  Burgess  McLuckey  or  Hugh 
McDonnell  refuses  to  wash  for  what  he  is  willing  to 
pay,  that  is  her  right,  but  she  has  no  right  to  stand  in 

[52] 


LABOR 


front  of  his  door  and  fling  stones  at  another  woman  who 
comes  to  take  her  place  and  do  tlie  work  under  the  new 
scale  of  wages  which  he  is  willing  to  pay." 

It  is  a  question  closely  connected  with  this 
simple  proposition  about  the  washerwoman, 
whether  men,  women  and  children,  working  for 
"A"  and  well  treated  by  him,  should  be  forced 
out  of  work,  and  "A"  incidentally  ruined,  because 
"B,"  who  buys  goods  from  "A,"  is  unsatisfactory 
to  "B's"  own  employees.  The  general  labor  or- 
ganizations take  the  position  that  they  may  justly 
inflict  any  amount  of  suffering  on  innocent  em- 
ployers and  innocent  employees  in  order  to  win  a 
contest  in  a  separate  establishment.  If  "B"  is  un- 
satisfactory the  association  says  to  "A,"  "Neither 
buy  from  'B'  nor  sell  to  him,  or  we  will  stop 
your  business."  The  principle  of  the  sympathetic 
strike,  once  admitted,  is  easily  carried  on,  in  the 
minds  of  many  laborers,  to  the  general  and  even 
to  the  universal  strike.  Where  the  line  shall  be 
drawn  will  ultimately  be  determined  partly  by  the 
general  public's  convenience,  but  still  more  by  its 
sense  of  justice.  Two  great  ethical  principles  un- 
doubtedly conflict  and  cannot  be  wholly  reconciled. 
Labor  must  organize  in  order  to  win,  and  it  must 
use   weapons.        The   non-union   laborer,   on   the 

[53] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


other  hand,  is  often  the  victim  of  gross  oppres- 
sion,* and  one  union  is  frequently  forced  into  idle- 
ness against  its  wishes  in  another's  quarrel.     A 
tragic  conflict  of  truths  lies  here,  and  similar  con- 
flicts  of   opposing  truths   are   seen   in  the   union 
label,  a  device  which  may  be  seen  as  mere  informa- 
tion to  the  public,  or  as  an  oppressive  aspect  of 
the  boycott  principle.     It  need  hardly  be  added 
that  all  these  questions  must  be  settled  ultimately 
in  the  light   of  general  principles,   whatever  the 
world  may  decide  those  principles  to  be.     The 
, blacklist  and  lockout  by  the  employer;  the  unfair 
•  list,  union  label  and  various  kinds  of  strikes  of 
'  the  employees;  the  closed  shop;  all  must  ultimate- 
'  ly  be  judged   and   regulated  on  simple   rules   on 
,  which  the  world  has  not  yet  agreed.     In  the  ulti- 
mate settlement  public  opinion  will  express  itself 
through  courts  and  legislatures,  but  more  through 
changes  in  employers  and  laborers. 

On  the  courts  has  fallen  criticism,  just  and  un- 
just. It  is  unfortunate  that  the  injunction  has 
been  used  so  much  more  freely  to  interfere  with 


*  "In  the  coal  strike,  an  innocent  and  competent  teacher,  who  hap- 
pened to  be  the  daughter  of  a  non-union  miner,  was  dismissed  by  the 
school  board  on  the  threats  of  the  union,  and  a  boy  working  in  a  drug 
store  was  dismissed  because  his  father  returned  to  work  before  the 
strike  was  declared  off."     Wright,  "Battles  of  Labor." 

[54] 


LABOR 


labor  than  with  capital — largely  because  the  ap- 
plication of  our  old  ideas  of  conspiracy  to  capital 
is  newer.        The   public   feels  that   although  the 
blacklist,  for  instance,  not  only  corresponds  to  the 
unfair  list  of  the  labor  unions,  but  can  be  used 
with  more  absoluteness  and  cruel  power,  it  has 
not   much   concerned  the   courts.      How   far  the 
courts  ought  to  police  the  community  is  an  open 
question,  but  at  least  the  public  will  never  be  satis- 
fied to  have  them  police  the  unions  unless  with 
equal  zealousness  they  police  the  capitalists.    Acts 
for  which  our  courts  are  still  enjoining  unions  are 
legalized  by  statute  in  Great  Britain;  and  more- 
over there  is  seizure  by  American  courts  of  power 
never  granted  to  them.     When  it  is  argued  that 
injunctions  are   necessary  in  labor  cases  because 
juries  will  not  convict,  the   foundation  of  demo- 
cratic  government    is    attacked    and    its    greatest 
merit  killed.     Democratic  government  means  gov- 
ernment of  the  people  by  themselves,  according 
to  their  ideas,  as  opposed  to  government  and  ideas 
imposed  upon  them.     When  juries  will  not  con- 
vict, therefore,  there  ought  to  be  no  punishment. 
Certainly  when  the  courts  carry  their  seizure  of 
power   so   far  as  to    allow^  a  judge  not   only  to 
grant  an  injunction  against  a  strike,  but  then  be 

[55] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


the  one  before  whom  his  own  injunction  is  tried, 
they  are  inviting  lawlessness  and  disaster. 

Laws  and  courts  amount  to  nothing  except  as 
representing  opinion.  The  most  real  progress 
will  come  from  increasing  reasonableness  in  both 
unions  and  employers,  and  from  constantly  bet- 
ter-informed and  broader  consideration  given  to 
the  subject  by  disinterested  outsiders.  Warren  S. 
Stone,  secretary  of  the  American  Brotherhood  of 
Locomotive  Engineers,  was  recently  quoted  thus : 

"I  do  not  believe  in  forcing  a  man  to  join  a  union.  If 
he  wants  to  join,  all  right,  but  it  is  contrary  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  free  government  and  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  to  try  to  make  him  join.  We  of  the  engi- 
neers work  willingly  side  by  side  with  other  engineers 
every  day  who  do  not  belong  to  our  union,  though  they 
enjoy  without  any  objection  on  our  part  the  advantages 
which  we  have  obtained.  Some  of  them  we  would  not 
have  in  the  union ;  others  we  cannot  get. 

"What  I  say  is,  make  the  union  so  good  that  they  will 
want  to  join." 

In  that  last  sentence  lies  philosophy.  The  union 
man  naturally  tends  toward  compulsion  when  he 
sees  others  working  by  his  side,  avoiding  dues 
and  cost  of  strikes,  and  yet  enjoying  advantages 
for  which  he  and  his  family  have  made  sacrifices 

[56] 


LABOR 


that  sometimes  break  the  heart.  If  by  its  pleas- 
antness, its  social,  economic  and  educational  ad- 
vantages, as  well  as  by  its  power,  the  union  can 
draw  enough  men  voluntarily  to  Its  membership, 
a  long  step  will  be  taken.  A  union  ought  to  be 
the  best  of  meeting  grounds.  Its  rooms  should 
offer  the  advantages  of  a  club,  a  library,  a  school; 
membership  in  it  should  be  an  easy  step  toward 
insurance  for  sickness,  old  age  and  death.  Here 
is  a  quotation  from  a  recent  intervievv^  with  a  labor- 
ing man,  Robert  Wuerst,  commissioner  of  the 
National  Metal  Trades  Association.  He  said  he 
had  fought  368  strikes  and  won  366,  but : 

"I'm  not  proud  of  that  record;  I  like  to  hear  people 
tell  me  I've  prevented  more  strikes  than  I  have  fought. 

"What  we're  mostly  proud  of  is  our  cooperative  engi- 
neering course,  which  builds  the  apprentice  boy  into  a 
competent  engineer." 

The  scheme  to  which  Commissioner  Wuerst  re- 
ferred was  carried  out  as  part  of  the  plan  of  Pro- 
fessor Schneider,  in  his  cooperative  school  operat- 
ed in  connection  with  the  University  of  Cincinnati. 
Professor  Schneider's  idea  was  founded  on  the 
need  of  technical  training,  one  of  the  great  basic 
facts  of  present-day  life.  He  saw  that  the  public 
schools,  whatever  manual  work  they  undertake, 

[57] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


can  never  have  courses  corresponding  to  the  hun- 
dreds of  different  trades,  and  therefore  he 
thought,  as  we  cannot  adequately  put  the  shops 
into  the  school  system,  we  must  bring  the  school 
into  the  factory,  educating  the  youth  at  the  same 
time  of  his  life  in  both  school  and  factory.  The 
details  of  this  plan  are  beyond  the  scope  of  this 
book,  but  a  suggestion  of  the  principles  on  which 
it  is  founded,  and  of  the  degree  to  which  it  is 
successful,  may  be  found  in  a  reply  from  Profes- 
sor Schneider,  written  in  April,  1910,  to  an  in- 
quiry from  me : 

"  .  .  .  .  You  will  understand  that  the  cooperative 
scheme  does  not  necessarily  mean  alternate  weeks  in  the 
school  and  the  shop.  The  particular  scheme  to  take  the 
school  to  the  boy  on  the  job  is  merely  a  detail  which 
must  fit  local  conditions.  For  instance,  for  the  education 
of  machinist  apprentices  in  Cincinnati,  there  is  a  school  in 
the  public  school  sj'stem  to  which  machinist  apprentices 
go  one  half  day  per  week.  Manufacturers  pay  the  ap- 
prentices for  the  time  they  spend  in  school.  Again  in  the 
scheme  outlined  for  the  department  store,  you  will  note 
that  the  clerks  attend  alternate  weeks  from  eight  o'clock  to 
ten  o'clock  in  the  morning.  In  other  words,  the  details  of 
how  and  when  the  school  shall  be  taken  to  the  boy  or  girl 
on  the  job,  must  depend  on  local  conditions  entirely.  The 
fundamental  principle  is  to  take  the  school  to  the  boy  and 

[58] 


LABOR 


girl,  and  to  have  a  definite  cooperation  and  coordination 

between  the  school  and  the  shop 

"In  the  trade  work,  we  have  simply  taken  the  old- 
fashioned  apprenticeship  work  and  added  something  to  it, 
namely,  instruction  leading  to  higher  efficiency  and  better 
citizenship." 

Another  principle  may  advantageously  be  put 
in  the  form  of  a  quotation  from  Mr.  Wuerst,  as 
when  labor  organization  accepts  a  correct  princi- 
ple much  is  gained,  even  as  when  a  large  employer 
yields  a  point  theretofore  combatted: 

"  .  .  .  .  One  notable  advance  of  the  past  few  years 
has  been  the  premium  system.  By  its  operation  a 
time  limit  is  placed  upon  a  certain  set  of  operations. 
This  is  always  figured  generously.  For  example,  a  man 
is  expected  to  turn  out  a  certain  number  of  castings 
in  nine  hours.  Then  he  is  paid  by  the  piece,  and  the  time 
limit  is  so  figured  that  he  can  turn  out  far  more  than  the 
number  required  of  him  as  a  day's  work.  Invariably  the 
men  have  largely  increased  their  wages  in  this  way,  and 
workmen  and  foremen  alike  are  enthusiastic  in  its  favor. 
That  plan  offers  a  premium  to  individualism.  The  slowest 
workman  can  always  make  his  day's  wage — and  the  bet- 
ter workman  he  is  the  more  he  can  make." 

When  this  plan  was  initiated  at  the  Philadel- 
phia convention  of  1903,  it  was  opposed  by  the 
International   Association    of    Mechanics,    and   it 

[59] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


has  been  opposed  by  many  unions  since,  on  the 
ground  that  payment  in  wages  based  on  perform- 
ance means  that  the  employers  will  persistently 
find  opportunities  to  force  up  the  standard  of  ac- 
complishment for  a  given  wage — an  objection 
aimed  at  any  plan  of  piece  work.  As  general  in- 
dustrial understanding  and  good  will  increase,  this 
weakness,  based  on  selfishness  and  bad  faith,  will 
grow  less,  and  the  minimum  wage,  made  possible 
by  a  minimum  efficiency,  and  supplemented  by 
payment  for  extra  performance,  will  be  the  future 
basis  of  payment  for  many  kinds  of  labor. 

A  certain  carpenter  was  asked  why  he  had  left 
a  large  city  and  ceased  to  be  a  union  man.  "Well," 
he  said,  "I  was  a  good  carpenter,  and  I  like  to 
work.  It  didn't  please  me  to  be  told  I  must  do 
as  little  as  the  man  alongside  of  me.  I  had  heard 
wages  were  high  in  the  city,  so  I  went  there,  but 
I  was  worse  off  at  the  end  of  a  year  than  I  was 
at  home,  because  this  union  business  held  me 
back.  So  I  hunted  up  a  small  town,  with  plenty 
of  wooden  buildings,  and  set  up  for  myself,  and 
accepted  only  work  that  I  could  do  alone.  The 
result  is  I  am  busy  and  happy  and  well  off ;  I  work 
as  long  as  I  feel  like  it,  sometimes  eight  hours, 
sometimes  twelve.     I  charge  high  prices,  but  my 

[60] 


LABOR 


customers  get  their  money's  worth."  That  man's 
children  have  all  necessary  advantages,  and  full 
opportunity  to  rise.  Any  solution  of  the  labor 
problem  which  suppresses  the  abler  man  will  work 
out  badly.  In  helping  the  weak  we  must  remem- 
ber that  progress  is  made  by  the  strong.  The 
weak  in  one  century  are  better  off  because  the 
strong  were  free  a  century  before.  United  labor 
will  never  have  the  full  sympathy  of  society  ex- 
cept where  it  is  willing  to  see  one  man  do  more 
and  better  work  than  his  neighbor  of  lesser  gifts 
or  weaker  character.  The  suppression  of  the 
superior  individual,  the  limitation  of  output,  and 
the  refusal  to  allow  skill  to  be  generally  acquired, 
are  three  positions  which  can  never  have  public 
support.  The  laborer,  like  the  employer,  must 
have  a  conscience  about  the  general  welfare. 
Dreams  of  the  universal  strike  will  lead  him 
wrong.  He  will  gain  more  by  reason  than  by 
oppression.  Just  as  the  public  is  studying  to 
check  monopoly  in  capital  it  will  never  permit 
monopoly  in  labor.  It  will  never  permit  any 
labor  organizations  to  grow  so  strong  that  they 
can  tyrannize  over  the  whole  industrial  field.  We 
must  keep  the  freedom  to  talk  it  all  over  reason- 
ably together.     Each  union  should  be  strong;  the 

[61] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


stronger  It  Is  the  more  rational  It  will  be;  but  a 
union  trust  can  become  so  powerful  and  cumber- 
some that  It  not  only  offends  our  sense  of  free- 
dom, but  acts  on  so  broad  a  field  that  It  cannot  be 
properly  In  touch  with  conditions.  Our  hope  lies, 
not  In  the  fight  of  one  vast  trust  against  another, 
but  In  rational  and  close  personal  relations  In  sep- 
arate Industries — In  boards  of  conciliation.  In  Im- 
proved laws  and  enlightened  judges,  In  long  con- 
tracts and  steadier  employment,  In  Increased  effi- 
ciency as  well  as  Improved  conditions,  In  unions 
which  are  so  Intelligent  and  attractive  that  they 
do  not  need  oppression  to  bring  members,  or 
strikes  to  give  them  a  just  share  of  the  products 
of  industry;  a  share  as  full  as  Is  consistent  with 
a  return  to  capital  sufl'iclent  to  keep  it  active,  and 
is  also  consistent  with  honest  consideration  for 
the  consumer  and  the  cost  of  living.  Happily  this 
Ideal  of  reason,  of  knowledge  and  of  fellow-feel- 
ing, plays  daily  a  larger  part  In  the  world's  task, 
growing  with  such  speed  that  twelve  months  sel- 
dom pass  without  an  advance  sufficient  to  encour- 
age belief  and  hope. 


[62] 


CHAPTER  III. 

Production. 

To  Adam  Smith,  for  ten  men  to  make  48,000 
pins  in  one  day  gave  food  for  wonder  and  sur- 
mise. By  1888,  three  men  could  produce  in  a  day 
7,500,000  pins  of  quality  much  superior.*  About 
thirty  years  ago  it  was  estimated  that  an  individ- 
ual could  produce  about  750  times  as  much  yarn  as 
100  years  earlier. t  In  1780,  before  the  grain 
cradle  was  invented,  an  able-bodied  farm  laborer 
in  Great  Britain  with  a  sickle  could  reap  about 
one  quarter  of  an  acre  of  wheat  in  a  single  day. 
Two  horses  and  a  man,  in  the  same  time,  can  now 
cut,  rake  and  bind  the  wheat  of  twenty  acres.  All 
the  resources  of  1840  would  be  inadequate  to  reap 
or  sow  our  present  annual  crop  of  wheat  or 
corn.$  Production  on  a  big  scale  begins  almost 
from  the  Civil  War.  What  becomes  of  this  mul- 
tiplied product  of  man  working  for  a  given  time? 
Partly  he  has  decided  to  work  less  and  live  more, 
but  principally  he  has  increased  his  consumption, 


*  D.   S.   Wells,   "Recent    Economic   Changes." 
t  Hoyle,   "Our   National    Resources." 
t  Wells,    "Recent    Economic    Changes." 

[63] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


especially  In  substantial  food  and  clothing,  but 
also  in  books,  newspapers,  theatres,  furniture, 
house  decoration,  kerosene,  sewing  machines,  mo- 
tors, and  other  articles  which  in  the  opinion  of  the 
human  animal  multiply  the  value  of  his  life.  Also 
more  creatures  can  exist.  One  hundred  years  ago 
the  population  of  1910  could  not  have  lived.  An 
Oriental  legend  tells  of  a  man  of  great  learning 
who,  able  by  incantation  to  compel  inanimate  ob- 
jects to  work,  ordered  a  stick  to  bring  him  water. 
Now  it  happened  that  he  was  ignorant  of  the 
words  which  would  revoke  the  order  to  a  stick 
engaged  in  bringing  water.  When  the  amount  of 
water  produced  began  to  look  dangerous,  he 
chopped  the  stick  in  several  pieces.  Each  piece 
then  began  to  bring  him  as  much  water  as  the 
whole  had  brought  before,  and  ultimately  the 
magician  himself  and  the  whole  world  in  which  he 
lived  were  destroyed  by  the  forces  which  he  had 
discovered  but  only  imperfectly  controlled.  Ac- 
cording to  Chinese  philosophers,  the  powers  which 
we  have  called  into  existence  must  ultimately  de- 
stroy us.  In  Europe  and  America  also  numerous 
men,  including  wise  ones,  have  thus  pointed  with 
alarm  to  present  or  predicted  results  of  mechanical 
productiveness.     Professor  Ely  says  of  the  com- 

[64] 


PRODUCTION 


petltive  system  to  which  much  of  our  inventive- 
ness has  been  due : 

"In  its  onward  march  it  crushes  and  grinds  to  powder 
human  existences  bj^  the  miUion ;  its  rubbish  has  magnitude 
of  tremendous  proportions,  and  this  rubbish  consists  of  hu- 
man beings  with  minds,  hearts  and  souls — men,  good  men 
often;  women,  and  very  frequently  indeed  innocent  wo- 
men, women  with  precious  gifts  which  ought  to  be  de- 
veloped for  themselves  and  others ;  and  little  children  with 
all  their  possibilities," 

Although  the  laborer  Is  better  off  than  he  used 
to  be,  the  tragedy  still  is  bitter.  Our  manufacture 
of  matches  would  seem  incredible  to  the  past,  but 
while  47  per  cent,  on  Invested  capital  was  being 
made  for  stockholders,  girls  employed  did  not  re- 
ceive enough  to  keep  them  off  the  streets.  The 
speed  of  sewing  machines  Increased  so  rapidly 
that  In  the  six  years  from  1899  to  1905  the  num- 
ber of  stitches  per  minute  doubled,  but  meantime 
the  strain  on  a  girl's  eye  Is  more  than  doubled,  she 
is  used  up  faster,  and  she  receives  no  more  money 
for  her  life,*  all  the  gain  going  in  lower  prices  to 
the  consumer.  The  minute  specialization  through 
which  these  vast  gains  have  been  won  from  na- 
ture often  makes  of  the  laborer  a  mere  attendant 


•  Florence  Kelley,  "Some   Recent   Gains  through   Legislation." 

[65] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


to  a  machine.  It  takes  away  the  variety,  com- 
panionship and  personal  significance  of  the  old 
days  when  one  article  was  entirely  manufactured 
by  the  workman,  who  thus,  a  creator,  saw  his 
work  take  living  form  beneath  his  touch.  The 
old  Viking  was  soldier,  sailor,  merchant,  black- 
smith, all  at  once.  Henry  George,  In  his  "Social 
Problems,"  has  an  eloquent  description  of  the  old- 
time  blacksmith,  or  rather  "black-and-white- 
smith,"  for  the  finished  workman  worked  In  steel 
also.  His  smithy  stood  by  the  roadside,  and 
through  the  open  door  he  caught  glimpses  of  na- 
ture; wayfarers  stopped  to  inquire;  neighbors  to 
tell  and  to  hear  news;  children  saw  the  hot  iron 
glow  and  watched  the  red  sparks  fly.  The  smith 
shod  a  horse;  then  he  put  on  a  wagon-tire;  he 
forged  and  tempered  a  tool,  or  welded  a  broken 
andiron;  he  beat  on  a  crane  for  the  deep  chimney- 
place;  and  when  he  had  nothing  else  to  do,  per- 
haps, he  wrought  Iron  Into  nails.  Now,  instead 
of  this,  we  see  enormous  establishments  covering 
acres  and  acres,  where  workmen  are  massed  to- 
gether by  the  thousands.  The  doors  are  marked, 
"Positively  No  Admittance."  The  workman  lives 
silent  In  a  whirl  of  wheels  and  belts,  doing  over 
and  over  the  self-same  thing,  passing  all  day  long 

[66] 


PRODUCTION 


bars  of  iron  through  great  rollers,  presenting 
plates  to  steel  jaws,  turning  bits  of  iron  over  and 
back  again  sixty  times  a  minute,  year  following 
year.  The  boy  in  early  youth  can  learn  to  tend 
his  machine — when  his  hair  is  gray  he  knows  no 
more.  If  sixty  persons,  in  cooperation,  make 
shoes  with  incredible  rapidity,  so  that  all  of  us 
are  better  shod,  not  one  of  the  sixty  could  make 
a  shoe  alone.  The  farmer's  wife  is  no  longer 
able  to  take  the  sheep's  wool  and  produce  her 
husband's  coat.  The  laborer,  knowing  only  one 
step  in  a  complex  process,  and  for  other  reasons, 
finds  it  harder  to  become  himself  an  employer. 
He  becomes  part  of  a  great  machine  which  may 
be  paralyzed  without  his  fault, 

I  need  hardly  repeat  my  belief  that  the  draw- 
backs from  specialization,  concentration  and  ma- 
chinery are  far  outweighed  by  the  advantages. 
The  general  rule  is  that  the  worker  in  a  modern 
factory  leads  a  higher  life  than  the  average 
laborer  ever  lived  before.  Alfred  and  Mary 
Paley  Marshall,  in  "The  Economics  of  Industry," 
remark  that : 

"When  the  work  is  light,  and  the  hours  of  work  not 

excessive,    monotony    is   not   very    injurious Even 

when    the    division    of    labor    makes    the    work    of    an 


[67] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


individual  monotonous  and  uniform,  it  makes  the  work 
of  the  country  at  large  changeful  and  various.  The 
worker  in  a  town,  whose  mental  and  physical  energies  are 
not  strained  by  his  work,  can  hardly  fail  to  be  educated 
by  the  variety  and  excitement  of  the  various  work  that  is 
going  on  around  him." 

Mr.  Nasmyth,  in  the  Tenth  Report  of  Trades 
Union  Commissioners,  said  in  1868  : 

"If  you  call  for  the  brute  force  of  a  man  you  will  de- 
grade the  man.  He  goes  to  his  house  so  physically  ex- 
hausted that  it  is  an  utter  absurdity  to  say  to  that  man, 
'Read  and  improve  yourself.'  He  would  fall  asleep  im- 
mediately: he  must  go  and  take  some  excitement.  But  if 
you  take  the  man  who  has  been  superintending  some  piece 
of  machinery  all  day,  in  which  there  is  very  little  or  only 
a  minimum  of  call   for  his   brute   force,   you  will   find 

....  a  reader  and  a  self-cultured  man I  think 

this  is  the  result  of  machinery,  that  it  takes  away  the 
necessity  of  brute  labor,  and  very  much  elevates  the  in- 
tellectual and  moral  position  of  the  working  classes." 

Not  all  the  evils  charged  against  modern  in- 
dustry by  Henry  George  and  others  are  fanciful, 
and  not  all  that  exist  can  be  removed,  for  some 
are  inherent  in  the  tragedy  of  life.  A  great 
sweetening  of  the  human  lot  is  possible,  however, 
with  kindness  and  knowledge.  The  economic 
basis  for  a  happier  existence  apparently  will  not 

[68] 


PRODUCTION 


fail  us,  but  on  the  contrary  a  given  amount  of 
effort  will  continue  to  produce  more  and  more  for 
man.  Machinery  will  be  improved,  but  methods 
and  organization  will  be  improved  still  further. 
Many  experts  look  upon  efficiency  as  in  its  in- 
fancy. The  studies  of  F.  W.  Taylor  and  others 
in  special  branches  of  this  field  lately  suggest  al- 
most unlimited  possibilities.  One  of  these  experts, 
Harrington  Emerson,  in  his  recent  book  on  "Ef- 
ficiency as  a  Basis  for  Operation  and  Wages,"  de- 
clares that  men,  women  and  children  starve,  not 
because  there  is  not  abundance,  and  not  because 
a  few  have  appropriated  the  portion  of  many,  but 
because  there  is  a  quite  unnecessary  waste.  Man, 
he  says,  wastes  three  quarters  of  the  coal  in  the 
ground,  brings  the  remainder  to  the  surface  by  in- 
efficient labor  and  appliances,  and  doubles  or 
quadruples  its  cost  in  transportation.  Rarely  is 
ten  per  cent,  of  the  coal  transformed  into  electri- 
cal energy;  of  this  only  five  per  cent,  can  appear 
as  light;  and  ten  to  twenty  times  as  much  light  is 
provided  on  a  writing  table  as  is  necessary,  be- 
cause of  the  distance  of  the  bulbs  from  the  place 
where  the  light  is  needed.  The  firefly,  converting 
the  hydrocarbons  of  its  food  into  light,  and  using 
the  light  for  its  purpose,  is  in  production  about 

[69] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


750  times  as  efficient  as  man,  in  volume  use  ten 
times  as  economical,  in  time  use  twice  as  economi- 
cal; or  altogether  15,000  times  as  efficient  as  his 
human  rival. 

"Even  if,  as  yet,  some  of  the  high  efficiencies  seen  in 
nature  are  beyond  reach,  it  is  a  greater  reason  for  eliminat- 
ing those  wastes  which  are  avoidable  and  which  are  pri- 
marily responsible  for  the  starvation  of  men,  women  and 
children." 

Mr.  Taylor  calculates  that  a  first-class  man 
can,  under  proper  conditions,  accomplish  from 
two  to  four  times  what  he  does  accomplish,  and 
that  with  no  sacrifice  of  health  or  strength. 

Our  crops  are  about  30  per  cent,  of  what  they 
ought  to  be.  The  average  yield  of  potatoes  per 
acre,  over  a  series  of  years,  is  96  bushels.  In  the 
desert  state  of  Wyoming  an  average  yield  of  200 
was  reached  in  1907,  owing  to  the  intelligence  of 
one  man,  who  himself  reached  1,000  per  acre, 
while  the  fertile  state  of  Kansas  was  averaging 
6s-  He  reached  an  efficiency  five  times  as  great 
as  the  average  in  his  own  state,  ten  times  as  great 
as  the  average  in  the  United  States,  and  thirteen 
times  as  great  as  the  average  in  a  state  as  blessed 
as  Kansas  with  favorable  soil  and  climate.  Call- 
ing the  standard  500  per  acre,  as  Mr.  Emerson 

[70] 


PRODUCTION 


does,  or  half  of  the  Wyoming  man's  yield,  the 
yield  in  the  United  States  is  19  per  cent,  of  what 
it  should  be,  and  in  Kansas  12  per  cent.  If  the 
whole  United  States  attained  an  efficiency  in  this 
one  crop  of  only  50  per  cent,  of  standard,  the 
increased  value  would  be  enough  in  one  year  to 
pay  for  the  Panama  Canal,  or  the  present  result 
could  be  reached  with  40  per  cent,  of  the  acreage 
and  labor.  It  is  estimated  that  a  standard  attain- 
able yield  of  wheat  is  fifty  bushels.  The  actual 
yield  is  fourteen.  The  total  is  650,000,000,  when 
it  ought  to  be  2,500,000,000;  and  yet,  as  Mr. 
Emerson  exclaims,  there  are  charity  bread  lines 
in  New  York.  Intensity  of  production,  he  goes 
on,  on  the  human  side,  should  mean  not  the  physi- 
cal exhaustion  of  an  overworked  victim,  but  the 
joyful  stimulus  that  comes  from  favorable  condi- 
tions. As  the  conditions  in  industrial  organiza- 
tion are  no  higher  than  those  of  agriculture,  the 
amount  of  needless  loss  going  on  at  present  is  al- 
most beyond  the  power  of  the  mind  to  grasp. 

The  machine,  therefore,  and  the  modern  me- 
chanical system  of  industry,  may  be  turned  into 
the  world's  greatest  benefactor,  but  it  has  many 
charges  yet  to  meet,  political  as  well  as  social  and 
economic.      Let  us  take  up  what  is  probably  the 

[71] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


largest  strictly  political  issue  that  confronts  us. 
The  machine  is  father  to  the  trust,  and  to  all  its 
social  and  economic  problems.  Units  of  capital 
have  grown  so  large  that  they  cannot  be  met  on 
equal  terms  by  some  of  their  competitors,  labor 
unions  or  by  legislatures.  The  whole  competitive 
system  is  thus  put  on  trial,  and  in  a  new  light.  In 
many  lines  of  manufacture  we  cannot  have  the 
kind  of  competition  which  existed  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago,  without  disastrous  fluctuations  in 
prices  and  increased  danger  of  commercial  crises,* 
due  to  irregular  investments  of  capital.  The  best 
intellect  of  the  United  States  is  now  studying  how 
to  regulate  competition,  and,  as  the  result  thus 
far  remains: 

"  .  .  .  .  We  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain 
Swept  with  confused  alarms  of  struggle  and  flight, 
Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night." 

One  corporation  has  annual  receipts  of  over 
$350,000,000.  The  very  fact  of  its  size  makes 
it  certain  to  be  controlled  by  a  few  rich  men,t  and 
such  was  the  avowed  purpose  of  Mr.  Morgan  and 
Mr.  Hill  in  forming  the  Northern  Securities  Com- 


*  Hadley,   "The   American    Citizen." 

t  See  an  extremely  able  and  suggestive  study  of  the  subject  by  Chas. 
P.  Howland  in  The  Columbia  Law  Review,  February,  1910,  entitled 
"Monopolies :   The   Cause   and   the    Remedy." 

[72] 


PRODUCTION 


pany.  It  is  in  a  modern  form  the  evil  which  the 
old  law  objected  to  as  mortmain.  As  Mr.  How- 
land  says,  in  a  letter  to  me: 

"Huge  corporations  are  obnoxious  when  tiiey  monopo- 
lize business  in  a  given  commoditj',  but  they  present  a 
greater  danger  on  social  and  political  grounds.  Many 
accumulations  of  wealth  in  corporate  form  are  as  much 
of  a  menace  to  the  future  of  the  country  as  if  they 
possessed  a  monopoly — perhaps  even  greater,  for  they  are 
less  likely  to  arouse  resistance.  If  the  International  Mer- 
cantile Marine,  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  the  Union 
Pacific  system,  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  the  Gen- 
eral Electric  Company  should  merge  in  a  single  corpora- 
tion or  be  combined  by  a  holding  company,  there  would 
be  no  combination  of  competitors,  but  the  combination 
would  be  too  great  for  republican  government  to  endure." 

After  the  merger  decision  of  1904  a  well- 
known  lawyer  declared  that  no  one  any  longer 
believed  competition  to  be  the  life  of  trade.  Our 
attention  has  been  more  and  more  called  to  the 
fact  that  "competition  among  animals  means 
death," — and  often  among  men.  What  shall  we 
say  of  "cutthroat  competition" — selling  below  cost 
of  production  in  order  to  destroy?  Is  it  wrong 
economically?  Is  it  wrong  morally?  Would  it 
be  right  for  the  Standard  Oil  Company  to  lower 
its  prices  in  one  state  just  long  enough  to  send  a 

[73] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


local  petroleum  business  to  Its  eternal  rest?  The 
courts  are  now  endeavoring  to  apply  the  Constitu- 
tion and  the  old  laws  about  monopoly  to  our  com- 
plex modern  conditions,  but  neither  the  public  nor 
the  lawyers  are  agreed  about  whether  this  task 
can  best  be  executed  by  courts,  legislatures  or 
special  expert  commissions.  It  is  a  task  for  an 
intellectual  Hercules,  or  rather  for  thousands  of 
them,  and  the  best  thinking  available  will  be  insuffi- 
cient without  prolonged  study  of  experience  as  it 
is  acquired.  No  one  sweeping  rule  will  be  suffi- 
cient. As  President  Hadley  puts  it,  competition 
is  a  good  medicine  for  some  things,  but  not  for  all. 
We  must  not  forget,  in  our  regulation,  what  has 
been  taught  us  by  the  past;  as,  that  when  prices 
rise  and  fall  with  demand,  economy  is  practiced 
during  scarcity,  but  when  the  mediaeval  church 
undertook  to  forbid  any  raise  in  the  price  of  bread 
the  result  was  famine.  Also,  to  go  on  with  Dr. 
Hadley's  argument,  down  to  the  eighteenth  century 
the  general  practice  had  been  to  hedge  about  busi- 
ness with  a  multitude  of  restrictions.  Under  the 
influence  of  the  individualist  philosophy  of  the 
first  half  of  that  century,  these  restrictions  were 
removed,  and  the  resulting  freedom  was  of  un- 
doubted benefit.     When  a  man  had  the  right  to 

fT4] 


PRODUCTION 


enjoy  what  he  produced,  he  was  driven  by  a 
stronger  motive  to  work.  The  increased  energy 
thus  set  loose  was  what  put  an  end  to  the  economic 
need  of  serfdom.  Labor  became  free,  wiUing  and 
efficient.  As  free  use  of  it  was  guaranteed,  capi- 
tal was  accumulated,  saving  was  practiced,  new 
methods  of  production  were  enthusiastically  de- 
veloped. A  few  centuries  ago,  individual  free- 
dom was  not  recognized,  in  law,  in  morals  or  in 
trade.  It  was  found,  little  by  little,  that  human 
nature  could  be  trusted.  When  the  eighteenth 
century  granted  industrial  freedom,  it  was  fol- 
lowed not  only  by  efficiency  in  labor  and  by  in- 
crease and  intelligence  of  capital,  but  also  by  large 
schemes  of  material  service ;  by  constitutional  lib- 
erty and  rational  altruism,  as  well  as  by  modern 
business  power.  Macaulay  said  that  the  cure  for 
evils  of  liberty  was  more  liberty.  Much  truth  lay 
here,  which  we  must  remember,  yet  we  are  con- 
vinced that  no  one  principle  can  serve  this  multi- 
form universe.  That  unchartered  liberty  cannot 
be  trusted  all  alone  is  shown  by  the  now  universal- 
ly conceded  need  of  the  factory  legislation  which 
most  of  the  British  political  economists  condemned 
at  the  time  when  it  was  passed.  The  warning 
to  be  derived  from  these  experiences  of  the  past 

[75] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


is  not  against  any  regulation,  but  against  any  that 
is  not  clearly  conceived,  unmistakably  necessary, 
and  undertaken  with  a  full  realization  that  the 
world  has  lost  much  through  unwise  restriction 
made  in  pursuit  of  the  same  ideals  which  we  pur- 
sue today.  In  politics  it  will  not  do  to  urge  every- 
thing that  assumes  to  be  for  the  benefit  of  the 
common  man.  So  in  economics,  a  spirit  which  ac- 
cepts measures  merely  because  they  are  aimed  at 
trusts  is  not  safe.  Right  new  laws  would  do  a 
real  amount  of  good.  Wrong  ones  would  merely 
take  us  perhaps  to  new  evils  that  we  know  not  of. 
Some  French  writer  said  that  misdirected  virtue 
is  more  dangerous  than  vice.  Thus  far,  with  the 
public  mind  having  produced  no  clear  principles 
of  regulation,  we  can  intelligently  take  only  short 
steps.  Personally  I  believe,  for  instance,  that  Mr. 
Taft's  badly  drawn  corporation  tax  law  was  a 
start  in  the  right  direction,  not  only  because  it  is 
sound  as  taxation,  but  because  of  the  information 
in  which  it  might  result.  Publication  of  campaign 
contributions  is  another  example  of  the  kind  of 
step  forward  which,  if  not  very  far-reaching,  is 
at  least  seen  clearly  to  be  right;  and  taking  the 
tariff  question  in  its  details  out  of  politics  is  an- 
other.     Had  we   handled  our  natural   resources 

[76] 


PRODUCTION 


wisely  from  the  beginning,  and  not  been  in  such 
a  hurry  to  "develop"  the  country  rapidly  at  any 
cost,  the  trust  situation  might  have  been  much 
more  simple.  We  have,  however,  at  the  present 
moment  a  chance  to  do  in  Alaska  on  a  smaller 
scale  what  we  failed  to  do  here — use  the  natural 
resources  and  yet  not  allow  monopoly — and  we 
have  an  opportunity  also  to  work  out  the  problem 
in  the  only  natural  asset  in  the  country  that  is  left. 
The  water  power  was  not  given  away  with  the 
rest  because  it  was  not  discovered.  We  may  or 
may  not  be  able  to  solve  these  two  comparatively 
simple  problems  now,  even  after  all  our  expe- 
rience with  land,  timber,  minerals  and  railroads; 
and  yet  it  is  one  clear  opportunity  to  prevent  mo- 
nopoly instead  of  trying  to  regulate  it  after  it  has 
grown  huge.  If  principles  of  control  and  oi 
shared  advantage — like  those,  for  instance,  which 
Boston  applies  to  her  gas  franchise — had  been 
from  the  beginning  applied  to  much  of  the  earth's 
wealth  which  we  have  allowed  to  be  cornered  by 
the  few,  the  people  might  not  now  be  stirred  by  a 
sense  of  helplessness  in  the  presence  of  a  wrong, 
and  the  whole  expenses  of  government  might  be 
met  by  the  returns  from  franchises.  The  situa- 
tion  being  what   it   is,    however,   the   first   sound 

[77] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


step  must  be  the  increase  of  knowledge,  and  talk 
about  "inquisition"  in  corporate  matters  is  ill- 
applied.  A  short  time  before  these  words  were 
penned,  the  copper  producers  were  objecting  to 
publishing  monthly  the  output  of  refined  copper 
and  of  stocks  on  hand  in  North  America,  and  one 
of  them  was  quoted  thus : 

"There  is  no  more  reason  why  we  should  publish  our 
stocks  on  hand  than  the  steel  companies  of  the  country 
should  publish  theirs.  The  copper  figures  afford  too  much 
ammunition  for  speculation  in  Wall  street.  Besides,  the 
public  generally  arrives  at  an  erroneous  conclusion  of  the 
monthly  statements.  When  there  is  a  heavy  increase  in 
stocks,  the  cry  of  overproduction  goes  up.  The  result  is 
an  unwarranted  slump  in  copper  prices.  When  there  is  a 
reduction  vou  hear  famine  talk,  and  copper  prices  move 
up." 

All  such  arguments  must  yield  to  the  stronger 
consideration  that  our  concentrated  industrial  sys- 
tem is  on  trial  and  that  wise  regulation  of  it  is 
impossible  without  as  much  knowledge  as  possible, 
not  only  in  expert  boards,  like  Public  Service  Com- 
missions or  the  Bureau  of  Corporations,  but 
among  the  people  generally,  who,  like  an  individ- 
ual, are  sure  to  be  made  cautious  by  increased  in- 
formation. The  more  the  human  mind  knows 
about  a  subject,  the  more  it  acquires,  not  of  the 

[78] 


PRODUCTION 


conservatism  which  Is  bhnd  fear  of  the  unknown, 
but  of  the  conservatism  which  means  caution  and 
thoroughness  In  the  face  of  complex  realities — 
like  the  courageous  humility  of  science. 

Most  difficult  of  all  the  problems  of  modern 
producing  methods  is  the  problem  of  mere  size. 
That  steam,  and  its  daughters  electricity  and  ma- 
chinery, have  resulted  with  complete  Inevltable- 
ness  in  great  concentration,  is  of  course  undoubt- 
ed. Up  to  the  point  that  centralization  of  indus- 
try is  actually  economical  it  probably  cannot  be 
and  ought  not  to  be  checked.  The  spot  we  wish 
first  to  discover  and  then  to  choose  for  attack  Is 
that  spot  where  centralization  ceases  to  win  by  the 
economies  It  produces  and  begins  to  win  by  the 
mere  ability  to  destroy  the  smaller  rival.  Here  is 
a  statement  by  an  expert  engineer:* 

"It  is  notorious  that  great  aggregations  of  wealth  and 
power  usually  do  not  operate  as  efficiently  as  smaller  con- 
cerns. Nothing  in  the  United  States  is  so  gigantically 
inefficient  in  proportion  to  its  power  and  opportunities  as 
the  United  States  government,  equally  in  what  it  attempts 
and  in  what  it  fails  to  attempt. 

"The  great  industrial  and  transportation  corporations 
are  often  very  efficient  in  manipulation,  but  content  with 


*  Harrington    Emerson,    "Efficiency    as    a    Basis    for    Operation    and 
Wages." 

[79] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


low  efficiency  of  operation,  although  there  are  notable  ex- 
ceptions. The  great  ocean  shipbuilding  yards  from 
Maine  to  Virginia,  from  Puget  Sound  to  the  Bay  of  San 
Francisco,  depend  not  at  all  on  the  internal  efficiency 
(which  enables  the  International  Harvester  Company,  al- 
though a  thousand  miles  inland,  to  export  in  competition 
with  the  whole  world)  but  solely  on  absolute  prohibition 
and  on  lavish  government  appropriations.  It  is  the  little 
American  plant  manufacturing  automobiles,  motor  boats, 
or  bicycles,  making  locomotive  repair  parts,  or  some  other 
specialty,  that  defies  the  competition  of  the  world." 

Here  is  another  expert  engineer's  view:* 

"If  manufacturers  in  general  realized  how  much  an 
increase  in  efficient  operation  really  meant  to  them,  they 
would  be  very  slow  to  increase  the  size  of  a  plant  until 
they  had  become  pretty  well  convinced  that  they  had  got- 
ten it  up  to  its  maximum  efficiency." 

"  ....  If  the  same  intelligence  and  industry  had 
been  applied  generally  to  the  art  of  production  as  has 
been  exercised  in  selling  products,  I  can  hardly  help 
feeling  that  we  should  be  suffering  less  acutely  today 
from  high  prices 

"The  supreme  iinportance  of  efficiency  as  an  economic 
factor  was  first  realized  by  the  Germans,  and  it  is  this 
fact  that  has  enabled  them  to  advance  their  industrial 
condition,  which  twenty  years  ago  was  a  jest,  to  the  first 
place  in  Europe,  if  not  in  the  world." 


*  H.  L.  Gantt,  "Work,  Wages  and  Profits."  This  book  is  to  be 
highly  recommended  also  for  its  discussion  of  what  modes  of  payment 
make   for  efificiency. 

[80] 


PRODUCTION 


As  our  natural  resources  are  used  up  we  shall 
become  more  critical  of  the  sacrifice  of  efficiency 
to  a  size  which  is  successful  only  through  its  power 
to  murder  competition,  and  which  is  responsible 
not  only  for  much  economic  unsoundness  but  for 
much  political  uneasiness.     Daniel  Webster  said: 

"The  freest  government,  if  it  could  exist,  would  not 
long  be  accepted,  if  the  tendency  of  the  laws  were  to 
create  a  rapid  accumulation  of  property  in  few  hands,  and 
to  render  the  great  mass  of  the  people  dependent  and 
penniless.  In  such  a  case,  the  popular  power  would  be 
likely  to  break  in  upon  the  rights  of  property,  or  else  the 
influence  of  property  to  limit  and  control  the  exercise  of 
popular  power." 

And  Montesquieu,  in  his  "Spirit  of  the  Laws": 

"Commerce  is  a  profession  of  people  who  are  on  an 
equality,  for  merchants  of  unbounded  credit  would  monop- 
olize all  to  themselves.  The  most  miserable  among 
despotic  states  are  those  where  there  is  such  a  monopoly. 
.  .  .  All  inequality  in  a  dem.ocracy  ought  to  be 
derived  from  the  nature  of  the  democracy,  and  even 
from  the  principle  of  equality." 

Bacon's  opinion  was: 

"Above  all  things,  good  policy  is  to  be  used,  that  the 
treasures  and  moneys  in  a  state  be  not  gathered  into  few 
hands,  for  otherwise,  a  state  may  have  great  stock,  and 

[SI  J 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


yet  starve;  and  money  is  like  muck,  not  good  except  it  be 
spread." 

Adam  Smith  spoke  of: 

"The  mean  rapacity,  the  monopolizing  spirit  of  mer- 
chants and  manufacturers,  who  neither  are  nor  ought  to 
be  the  rulers  of  mankind." 

Jefferson's  influence  on  the  thought  of  this 
country  is  largely  due  to  the  eloquence  and  convic- 
tion with  which  he  expressed  the  need  of  distribut- 
ing power.  Commenting  on  these  quotations  and 
the  principles  involved  in  them,  Mr.  Howland 
says  of  these  vast  artificial  creations,  to  which  we 
have  granted  powers  always  refused  to  individ- 
uals: 

"We  have  now  repealed  the  policy  of  centuries  and  re- 
established mortmain.  All  that  is  denied  to  individuals  by 
limitations  of  nature  and  of  public  policy  is  now  granted 
to  corporations  by  law.  Upon  their  power  to  possess  no 
limit  is  placed.  Every  day  the  mammoth  corporations  are 
withdrawing  from  the  general  mass  of  property  in  the 
country  an  increasing  proportion  of  the  common  wealth, 
which  thus  passes  beyond  the  sphere  of  general  distribu- 
tion. The  citizen,  who  in  theory  enjoys  an  equal  oppor- 
tunity with  all  others  to  engage  in  business  and  to  acquire 
a  share  in  that  general  mass  of  property,  finds  that  the 
mass  is  shrinking,  and  that  his  equal  opportunity  is  an 
opportunity  without  a  goal.    This  is  mortmain,  and  these 

[82] 


PRODUCTION 


are  its  evils Trusts  are  organized   for  pecuniary 

profit,  and  their  prices  are  dictated  by  tiieir  power  and 
prudence.  Once  in  charge  of  all  markets  they  may 
reduce  prices  much  slower  than  discoveries  of  trade, 
economies  of  production,  benefits  of  inventions  will  war- 
rant. After  a  time  we  have  no  means  of  knowing 
what  prices  would  have  been  without  monopoly;  where 
it  exists  all  opportunity  for  economic  comparison  ceases. 
....  Securities  in  any  amount  may  be  produced  at 
will — cash  avails  also  for  exceptional  cases,  w^ith  which 
to  buy  out  dangerous  rivals  if  any  remain ;  the 
same  factors  create  the  inducements  for  the  rivals  to 
sell.  If  they  will  not  sell,  the  trust  with  its  greater  capi- 
tal and  credit  can  maintain  a  price  war  until  they  suc- 
cumb. Then  the  trust  dominates  the  markets,  and  simple 
precautions  suffice  to  deter  new^  competition ;  the  trust 
will  buy  all  patents  and  facilities  helpful  to  its  control,  it 
will  extend  in  one  direction  to  control  the  supply  of  ma- 
terial, and  in  the  other  to  eliminate  middlemen  and  reach 
the  consumer.  The  larger  it  grows  the  stronger  it  be- 
comes  In  some  kinds  of  business  the  avenues  of 

trade  are  open  only  to  a  single  concern.  The  farmer 
may  sell  cattle,  linseed,  cottonseed  and  tobacco  only 
as  the  trusts  choose  to  buy,  and  he  may  buy  his 
fertilizers,  his  seeding  and  harvesting  machines  and 
his  jute-bagging  only  as  the  trusts  choose  to  sell  to  him. 
The  'cost  of  living,'  instead  of  being  an  expression  of  the 
needs  and  resources  of  society  adjusting  themselves  through 
multitudinous  transactions,  is  fixed  by  central  authorities; 
they  limit  the  output  and  control  the  prices  of  crackers, 

[83] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


hams,  sugar,  salt,  kerosene,  chewing  gum,  matches,  glue, 
soil  and  sewer  pipe,  radiators,  sewing  machines,  etc." 

The  Socialistic  remedy  I  shall  take  up  under 
Distribution,  since  it  seems  natural  to  discuss  it  in 
connection  with  cooperation,  and  cooperative  ac- 
tion has  been  employed  more  successfully  in  dis- 
tributing goods  than  in  producing  them.  The 
fact  that  the  production  of  so  many  articles,  in- 
cluding many  of  the  necessities  of  life,  has  tended 
rapidly  to  pass  into  the  hands  of  monopolies 
means  that  many  branches  of  business  will  be 
taken  over  by  the  government,  unless  the  intelli- 
gence and  character  of  the  people,  the  judges  or 
the  legislatures  prove  sufficient  to  work  out  a  sys- 
tem of  checks  or  of  supplements  not  yet  clearly 
seen.  The  discovery  of  absolute  remedies  or  ex- 
tensive mitigations  will  be  helped  by  every  wise 
bit  of  progress,  however  slight,  and  in  this  fact, 
even  more  than  in  the  direct  or  intrinsic  effect, 
lies  the  importance  of  such  steps  ahead  as  honest 
tariff  methods;  official  and  public  knowledge  of 
corporation  facts;  public  service  commissions; 
sharing  of  the  results  of  mechanical  processes  with 
the  public,  after  the  Massachusetts  plan,  or  with 
the  laborers,  in  steadier  employment  or  better 
hours  or  wages,  or  otherwise  in  fairer  relations. 

[84] 


PRODUCTION 


On  the  courts  lies  an  enormous  responsibility,  both 
to  bring  high  intelligence  to  those  aspects  of  the 
problem  which  are  presented  to  them  and  to  keep 
their  hands  off  those  aspects  which  are  not  submit- 
ted to  them.  I  share  essentially  Mr.  Roosevelt's 
feelings  about  the  Knight  decision  and  the  New 
York  Bake  Shop  decision,  and  deem  the  general 
answer  to  his  criticism  of  the  latter  case  inconclu- 
sive. The  Knight  case  showed  failure  so  to  con- 
sider the  real  facts  of  modern  life  as  would  make 
clear  what  actually  does  constitute  a  step  toward 
monopoly,  and  the  New  York  Bake  Shop  case 
showed  dangerous  interference  with  legislative 
rights.  When  the  legislature  of  a  state  under- 
takes to  regulate  industry,  wisely  or  unwisely,  the 
courts  ought  to  go  to  extremes  in  order  to  keep 
their  hands  off,  instead  of  to  extremes  in  order 
to  assume  control.  In  the  Bake  Shop  case  the 
court  in  reality  upset  a  law  because  they  did 
not  happen  to  share  the  judgment  of  the  legisla- 
ture. Nobody  has  made  them  a  repository  of 
political  wisdom,  and  if  they  do  not  cease  to  pro- 
gress In  legislative  usurpation  there  is  serious 
danger  that  an  angry  populace  will  one  day  strip 
the  courts  of  needed  powers  or  resort  to  short- 
term  elective  judges.     The  field  of  industry  and 

[85] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


economics  is  but  one  of  those  in  which  the  courts 
have  undertaken  a  power  which  it  was  never  in- 
tended they  should  have,  but  it  is  at  present  the 
most  dangerous  domain  in  which  they  have  in- 
dulged in  trespass. 

Even  if  we  show  the  most  profound  political 
and  economic  intelligence,  and  even  if  the  patience 
and  generosity  of  every  class  approaches  the  ideal 
of  Christianity,  some  of  the  evils  which  we  have 
been  discussing  will  remain,  for  the  individual  can 
never  again  in  the  United  States  change  his  social 
and  business  standing  as  readily  as  he  has  been 
able  to  do  among  the  virgin  resources,  sparse  pop- 
ulation, and  smaller  units  of  the  past.  He  loses 
some  freedom  to  advancing  social  communication 
and  dependence.  He  should,  however,  if  our 
brains  and  hearts  act  well,  have  for  his  labor  a 
greater  product,  which  should  mean  more  time  for 
thought  and  reading,  pleasanter  surroundings  for 
his  work,  longer  and  better  schooling  for  his  chil- 
dren. If  our  mechanical  progress  in  production 
tails  to  mean  all  this,  the  failure  will  lie  partly  in 
the  national  intelligence,  and  partly  in  the  imper- 
fect national  acceptance  of  the  simple  moral  com- 
monplaces to  which  we  all  do  homage  with  our 
lips. 

[86] 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Distribution. 

The  line  dividing  production  from  distribution, 
like  the  line  between  blue  and  green,  is  imaginary. 
The  one  shades  into  the  other.  The  railroad, 
which  brings  the  ore  to  the  steel  manufacturer 
and  the  casting  to  the  foundry,  is  as  much  an  ele- 
ment in  production  as  in  distribution.  Although 
the  two  objects,  however,  pass  one  into  the  other, 
large  areas  are  distinguishable,  and  while  some 
problems  are  alike  for  both,  others  are  dissimilar. 

Let  us  consider  first  that  great  modern  agent 
of  distribution  called  the  railroad.  That  it  con- 
tributes to  the  welfare  of  man  is  doubted,  it 
seems  to  me,  only  by  the  person  whose  thinking  is 
unreal;  who  inveighs  against  modern  conditions, 
and  yet  refrains  from  going  to  any  of  the  numer- 
ous spots  where  he  could  readily  find  surviving 
the  conditions  of  life  which  he  imagines  he  la- 
ments. Politically,  the  railroad  was  essential  to 
our  national  unity.  Economically,  it  is  a  leading 
factor  in  that  fluid  communication  and  distribution 
which  have  meant  the  transformation  of  the 
world  into  a  place  where  the  majority  are  further 

[87] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


removed  from  the  servile  state.  Without  it,  our 
crops  could  scarcely  move  from  the  region  where 
they  happened  to  be  grown. 

Bastiat  asks  what  the  carpenter,  who  spends  his 
life  making  tables  and  chairs,  receives  in  return. 
He  receives,  for  instance,  clothing,  to  make 
which  an  enormous  amount  of  labor  and  many 
ingenious  inventions  have  been  employed.  In 
one  part  of  the  world  cotton  has  been  pro- 
duced, in  another  wool  and  flax,  in  another  hides; 
and  all  these  materials  have  been  transported  to 
the  towns,  where  they  have  been  spun,  woven  and 
dyed.  He  receives  schooling  for  his  children, 
which  is  a  result  of  the  work  of  many  thousand 
minds.  If  he  undertakes  a  journey  he  finds  that 
other  men  have  filled  up  valleys  for  him,  hewn 
down  mountains,  and  united  the  banks  of  rivers. 
The  social  mechanism  gives  to  the  humblest 
workman  things  which  he  himself  could  not  pro- 
duce in  many  ages;  and  these  general  truths  are 
well  to  remember  in  a  day  when  the  desire  for 
regulation  is  not  always  accompanied  with  suffi- 
cient appreciation  of  what  the  railroads  have  ac- 
complished. 

In  the  railroad  problems  of  today,  the  in- 
tellectual    are    to     be     distinguished     from     the 

[88] 


DISTRIBUTION 


moral  elements.  The  intellectual  side  is  frankly 
still  almost  in  the  state  of  chaos.  Everybody  ad- 
mits the  need  of  regulation,  and  nobody  has  been 
able  to  draw  a  statute  which  should  seem  to  give 
a  satisfactory  outline  of  what  regulation  ought  to 
be.  Often  a  law  brings  about  the  opposite  of 
what  it  seeks,  as  the  laws  against  pooling  hastened 
combination.  The  abolition  of  long  and  short 
haul  prices,  and  the  introduction  of  a  straight 
mileage  rate  enforced  upon  the  roads,  might  al- 
most remake  the  map.  Nobody  can  be  sure  what 
it  would  or  would  not  do.  The  causes  which  de- 
termine rates  have  never  been  stated,  except  with 
the  utmost  vagueness,  by  the  men  who  make  them. 
They  are  a  complex  of  experience,  intended  to 
obtain  the  greatest  amount  of  profit,  and  there- 
fore in  the  main  to  stimulate  a  large  amount  of 
traffic,  but  there  is  no  clearer  rule.  Any  Com- 
merce Commission,  instead  of  sweeping  rules,  must 
for  a  time  feel  its  way  cautiously  about  rates,  just 
as  any  body  to  which  the  task  is  entrusted  must,  in 
the  present  state  of  thought,  feel  its  way  cautiously 
about  combination.  Even  when  a  conclusion  is 
clearly  accepted,  as  that  the  same  men  ought  not 
to  control  railways  and  the  products  which  they 
carry,  there  has  heretofore  been  no  successful  exe- 

[89] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


cution  of  the  idea ;  the  commodity  clause  of  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Act  being  thus  far  a  failure. 
Expert  boards  may  be  expected  to  accomplish 
more  in  time,  but  at  the  present  moment  they  have 
not  been  able  to  do  much  except  to  improve  de- 
tails of  service. 

Our  only  assured  progress  in  the  railroad  prob- 
lem has  been  political  and  moral.  We  have  in 
the  last  few  years,  by  abolishing  passes,  discourag- 
ing lobbyists,  improving  primaries  and  awakening 
public  opinion,  largely  forced  the  railroads  out 
of  politics.  The  Boston  &  Maine  no  longer  dic- 
tates laws  to  New  Hampshire,  or  the  Southern 
Pacific  to  California,  or  the  Atchison  to  Kansas. 
And  as  the  public  has  been  educated  in  this  regard, 
so  have  railroad  managers  also.  They  now  seek 
to  gain  points  from  legislatures  or  commissions, 
not  by  furtive  control  but  by  fair  and  open  argu- 
ment; and  often  they  welcome  regulation.  Few 
of  them,  for  example,  wish  to  go  back  to  the 
secret  rebates,  by  which  they  wrecked  useful  com- 
petition and  made  monopolies  in  lines  of  business 
for  which  there  was  no  economic  reason  for  mo- 
nopoly, as  there  is  in  railroads  themselves,  tele- 
graph lines,  or  telephones.  They  now  realize 
that,    as   Professor   Seligman   puts   it,    they  have 

[90] 


DISTRIBUTION 


no  more  right  to  make  different  rates  to  different 
customers  than  the  government  post-office  has. 
They  are  moving  rapidly  also  toward  the  point 
where  they  will  agree  that  "the  secret  and  unfair 
use  of  'inside  information'  is  one  of  the  most 
prolific  causes  not  only  of  unnatural  inequality, 
but  of  our  political  and  social  undoing."*  Mr. 
William  Henry  Baldwin,  Jr.,  himself  a  successful 
railroad  man,  urging  the  need  of  regulation  in  any 
industry  on  which  the  prosperity  of  all  depends, 
declared  that  "there  is  a  higher  law  than  supply 
and  demand."  It  was  this  same  enlightened  and 
successful  railroad  man  who  said,  what  can  still 
be  applied  to  some  great  roads,  "if  they  want  to 
fight  trade  unions,  that  is  their  privilege;  but  let 
them  do  it  openly  and  not  in  the  guise  of  baths, 
gymnasiums,  cheap  lunches,  entertainments,  or 
profit-sharing."  It  is  only  recently  that  social 
ideas  of  the  type  that  distinguished  Baldwin  have 
been  found  among  railroad  men.  The  builders, 
from  Vanderbilt  to  Hill,  have  been  powerful,  en- 
terprising, stirring  characters,  but  only  of  late 
have  they  seen  the  ethical  bearings  of  their  power. 
Colonel  Wright  believed,  "If  you  could  put  Bald- 


*  John    Graham    Brooks's    "An    American    Citizen,"    from    which    the 
•quotations  about  Baldwin  are  taken. 

[91] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


win's  capacity,  sympathy,  and  moral  insight  into 
all  our  employers,  there  would  be  an  end  to  all 
really  serious  labor  troubles  within  two  years." 
As  ideas  similar  to  those  of  Baldwin,  about  the 
railroads'  relations  not  only  to  employees  but  to 
the  whole  public,  are  spreading  among  the  able 
railroad  experts,  we  may  expect  some  effective 
cooperation  between  representatives  of  the  people 
and  the  men  who  best  know  the  difficulties  of  the 
problems.  Baldwin  said,  "I  need,  as  an  employer, 
an  organization  among  my  employees,  because 
they  know  their  needs  better  than  I  can  know 
them,  and  they  are  therefore  the  safeguard  upon 
which  I  must  depend  in  order  to  prevent  me  from 
doing  them  an  injustice."  Perhaps  the  day  is  to 
come  when  a  similar  confidence  will  exist,  in  both 
directions,  between  the  railways  and  the  public, 
Baldwin's  life  answered  affirmatively  the  question, 
which  Mr.  Brooks  heard  him  ask:  "Harnessed 
Into  a  great  corporation  as  I  am,  can  one  really 
fight  for  the  big  human  causes?  Can  one  through 
thick  and  thin  defend  his  own  corporate  interests 
and  at  the  same  time  defend  public  Interests?" 

The  favorable  answer  to  Mr.  Baldwin's  ques- 
tion has  been  made  possible  only  by  the  changing 
views  of  what  are  private  rights,  and  what  public 

[92] 


DISTRIBUTION 


duties  are.  Big  business,  under  modern  concentra- 
tion, has  of  necessity,  as  Mr.  Hadley  has  said,  be- 
come a  trust,  delegated  to  a  comparatively  few. 
If  this  system  is  to  be  satisfactory,  we  must  have 
the  modern  equivalent  of  the  teaching  of  Lycur- 
gus  to  the  Spartans.  "The  dread  of  living  for 
himself  alone  w^as  the  earliest  lesson  imprinted  on 
the  mind  of  a  Laodicean."  Ethics  change.  De- 
mosthenes was  bribed;  Themistocles,  Alcibiades 
and  Coriolanus  were  traitors.  Our  leaders  do 
not  commit  these  faults  now,  but  they  are  only 
just  learning  how  immoral  it  is  to  manufacture 
securities  instead  of  commodities.  Theft  was  the 
only  form  of  dishonesty  recognized  by  the  early 
Roman  law.  The  circumstances  of  life  are  chang- 
ing so  fast  that  laws  and  morals  both  find  difficulty 
in  adjusting  themselves.  We  live  under  a  new 
system.  "This  new  system  must  not  regard  the 
director  as  an  individual  pursuing  private  busi- 
ness of  his  own.  It  must  not  allow  him  to  resent 
the  supposition  that  he  shall  conduct  his  business 
unselfishly.  It  must  regard  him  as  having  moral 
responsibilities  to  his  stockholders,  to  his  work- 
ingmen  and  to  the  consumers."* 

Nor  must  the  change  apply  only  to  the  larger 

*  Hadley,   "The   Education   of  the  American    Citizen." 

[93J 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


kinds  of  business.  In  the  church  of  St.  James  of 
the  Rialto,  in  Venice,  Ruskin  read  the  ninth  cen- 
tury inscription:  "Around  this  Temple  let  the 
merchant's  law  be  just,  his  weights  true,  and  his 
contracts  guileless."  We  have  no  means  of  know- 
ing whether  this  advice  was  frequently  accepted. 
The  Roman  lawyers  assumed  that  trade  must  be 
without  any  moral  quality.  Paulus  puts  it  thus : 
"In  buying  and  selling  a  man  has  a  natural  right 
to  purchase  for  a  small  price  that  which  is  really 
more  valuable,  and  to  sell  at  a  high  price  that 
which  is  less  valuable,  and  for  either  to  over- 
reach the  other."  If  we  are  to  ask  honesty 
of  a  great  public  distributor  like  the  railroad,  we 
must  ask  it  also  in  the  smallest  retail  shop.  I 
do  not  believe  there  is  a  sounder  and  more  appro- 
priate law  on  the  statute  books  than  the  Pure  Food 
Law,  for  which  President  Roosevelt  fought  so 
hard,  and  against  which  Uncle  Joe  Cannon  fought 
so  doggedly.  And  we  have  gone  further  than  the 
right  to  mere  absence  of  fraud.  Mrs.  Kelley  says 
that  the  purchaser  now  has  the  right : 

1.  To  have  goods  as  represented. 

2.  To  have  food  that  is  pure  and  garments 
that  are  free  from  infection,  when  bought  of  rep- 
utable dealers  at  the  price  asked. 

[94] 


DISTRIBUTION 


3.  To  be  free  from  participation,  indirectly, 
through  purchase,  in  the  employment  of  children 
and  of  the  victims  of  the  sweating  system. 

A  recent  act  of  the  New  York  Legislature  was 
based  on  the  extremely  prevalent  custom  of  giv- 
ing short  weight  and  short  measure.  An  investi- 
gation indicated  that  in  prominent  thoroughfares 
of  New  York  59  per  cent,  of  the  scales,  71  per 
cent,  of  the  weights  and  82  per  cent,  of  the  capa- 
city measures  were  incorrect.*  Of  course  this  is 
another  case  where  comparatively  few  of  those 
who  cheat  are  of  dishonest  nature.  The  majority 
are  led  astray  by  unfair  competition,  and  will  wel- 
come effective  regulation.  So  with  the  sale  of 
fraudulent  wearing  apparel.  The  United  States 
government  probably  is  not  much  cheated  when  it 
buys  clothing,  but  nearly  every  private  citizen  is.f 
To  inferior  fabrics  is  skillfully  given  the  look  of 
superior  fabrics.  Cotton  is  made  to  look  like 
wool,  and'to  feel  like  linen.  Silk  is  adulterated  by 
the  addition  of  weighting  material;  $800,000,000 
are  spent  annually  in  the  United  States  in  clothing 


I 


*  Fritz  Reichmann,  Superintendent  of  Weights  and  Measures,  in  the 
American  Magazine,  September,   1910. 

t  See  a  treatment  of  this  subject  in  Harper's  Weekly  for  Marcli  5, 
1910,  by  Nellie  Crooks. 

[95] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


and  textile  materials,  and  a  large  part  of  it  is  still 
fraudulent. 

"Has  anything  been  done  to  relieve  this  state  of  afEairs? 
The  only  law  in  the  State  of  New  York  which  treats 
specially  of  the  adulteration  of  clothing  is  one  enacting 
that  collars  marked  'all  linen,'  'pure  linen,'  must  have  at 
least  one  ply  or  thickness  of  linen.  This  law  is  said  to 
have  been  passed  at  the  urgency  of  the  laundrymen  of 
Troy,  as  the  linen  collars  can  stand  the  alkalies  and  acids 
used  in  the  laundries  better  than  the  cotton  substitutes."* 

A  golden  rule  grocery  was  started  in  England, 
and  1  believe  did  not  over-well,  but  yet  it  is  what 
we  must  work  toward.  Old  John  Woolman,  when 
engaged  in  retail  trade,  stopped  selling  "things 
that  served  chiefly  to  please  the  vain  mind  in  peo- 
ple," and  he  said:  "I  found  it  good  for  me  to 
advise  poor  people  to  take  such  goods  as  were 
most  useful,  and  not  costly."  We  have  not  yet 
reached  Woolman's  standard,  but  it  is  easy  to 
see  why  Dr.  Eliot  included  him  among  the  Har- 
vard classics.  We  have  at  least  traveled  away 
recently  from  the  rule  of  law  known  as  "caveat 
emptor,"  which  meant  that  the  purchaser  must 
look  out  for  himself.    Frauds  of  adulteration,  and 


*  In  the  session  of  Congress  of  1910-11  Mr.  Victor  Murdock,  insur- 
gent leader  in  the  House,  has  introduced  a  bill  applying  the  pure  food 
principle  to  wearing  apparel. 

[96] 


DISTRIBUTION 


of  Inferior  material  and  workmanship,  were  en- 
couraged by  the  first  steps  of  separation  between 
production  and  distribution.  Once  the  bookmaker 
and  watchmaker  and  harnessmaker  sold  his  own 
products,  and  if  it  was  something  made  far  away, 
like  tea,  the  retailer  at  least  carefully  selected  his 
own  purchases.  When  big  manufacturers  began 
to  compete  against  one  another,  and  the  seller  was 
not  the  maker,  hidden  inferiority  became  easier, 
especially  at  first;  but  this  was  before  brands  and 
trade  marks  came  in,  to  make  the  better  class  of 
manufacturers  responsible  to  the  public  for  the 
quality  of  their  goods. 

And  this  mention  of  trade  marks  brings  me  to 
one  of  the  great  modern  methods  of  distribution, 
which  is  advertising.  This  is  the  modern  market- 
place. The  world  has  grown  too  big,  and  func- 
tion too  divided,  for  the  people  to  exchange  their 
completed  products  personally  in  a  village  square. 
Truth  in  advertising,  said  a  New  York  business 
man,  implies  integrity  in  manufacture.  The  large 
manufacturer  is  coming  to  approach  much  nearer 
to  the  truth  in  advertising  than  he  did;  to  rely 
upon  specific  information  rather  than  on  boasting. 
The  newspapers  and  periodicals  are  educating 
themselves  toward  cooperating  in  this  government. 

[97] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


Governor  Hughes,  somewhat  driven  by  the  agita- 
tion of  a  newspaper  which  was  itself  full  of  get- 
rich-quick  mining  advertisements  and  other  Stock 
Exchange  evils,  is  reported  to  have  said  that  one 
of  the  most  needed,  practical  and  salutary  steps 
would  be  to  prevent  the  newspapers  by  law  from 
lending  themselves  to  such  fraud.  Social  develop- 
ment, without  law,  has  carried  the  better  periodi- 
cals and  many  dailies  to  a  standard  which  makes 
them  decline  to  be  the  medium  for  financial  and 
medical  fraud.* 

In  order  to  avoid  the  waste  now  incurred  in  our 
methods  of  distribution,  to  assure  better  quality 
to  the  consumer,  to  give  to  the  consumer  the  man- 
agement of  the  business,  and  to  remove  other 
evils  of  the  system  of  competition,  many  experi- 
ments have  been  made  in  cooperative  distribution. 
Attempts  have  been  made  also  at  production  by 
cooperation,  but  the  results  have  shown  that  the 
world  is  further  from  being  able  to  produce  co- 
operatively than  it  is  from  being  able  to  distribute. 
An  appreciable  amount  of  retail  business  is  now 


*  Just  before  I  corrected  the  proofs  to  this  book  a  New  York  jury 
gave  a  verdict  of  $50,000  against  George  W.  Post  of  "Grape  Nuts"  and 
"Postum"  fame  in  favor  of  Collier's  Weekly,  the  size  of  the  verdict 
expressing  what  the  jury  thought  about  the  importance  of  honesty  in 
advertising. 

[98] 


DISTRIBUTION 


done  by  cooperation.  One  of  my  early  memories 
is  of  the  welcome  pecuniary  relief  furnished  to  the 
economical  student  by  the  Harvard  Cooperative 
Society,  and  when  one  reads  of  how  large  a  per- 
centage it  now  saves,  and  how  it  flourishes,  the 
wonder  is  that  the  system  does  not  spread.  Of 
course  that  society  is  conducted  with  ability,  and 
ability  is  essential.  Eight  million  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Great  Britain  now  buy  part  or  all  of  the 
ordinary  necessaries  of  life  from  cooperative 
stores.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  work  among  the 
Irish  farmers  includes  cooperative  marketing. 

There  has  been  effort  at  cooperative  selling  on 
the  continent,  although  it  has  proved  more  difficult 
than  cooperative  purchasing,  which  has  sometimes 
been  successful.  French  cooperative  purchasing 
societies  have  reduced  the  price  of  manure  by  20 
and  30  per  cent.  It  is  frequently  observed  that  en- 
lightened cooperative  education  has  turned  Den- 
mark from  weakness  into  strength  and  prosperity. 
There  has  on  the  continent  to  some  extent  been 
successful  cooperative  banking.*  Vines  have  been 
cultivated  in  Italy  on  a  system  by  which  the  prof- 
its are  divided  between  the  workers  and  the  own- 


*  For  the  fullest  account  of  what  has  been  done  see  C.   J.   Ilolyoake's 
book,   "The  Cooperative  Movement  Today." 

[99] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


ers  of  the  land  and  vines.  Early  in  the  nineteenth 
century  so  much  was  expected  of  various  forms  of 
social  labor  that  men  of  high  education  and  large 
ability,  as  Professor  Ely  says,  thought  that  com- 
munistic villages  would  revolutionize  the  economic 
life  of  the  world.  The  original  object  of  the 
cooperative  movement,  indeed,  was  to  establish 
self-supporting  communities,  distinguished  by  com- 
mon labor,  common  property,  common  means  of 
intelligence  and  recreation.  They  were  to  be  ex- 
amples of  industrialism  freed  from  competition. 
In  the  communal  life  an  ethical  character  was  to 
be  formed  in  the  young,  and  impressed  upon 
adults,  and  all  assured  education,  leisure  and  ulti- 
mate competence  as  results  of  their  industry.*  It 
was  expected  that  the  unnecessary  middlemen 
could  be  cut  out,  the  cost  of  production  reduced, 
demand  and  supply  brought  into  better  relation, 
and  the  alternation  of  activity  and  depression  in 
business  avoided. t  These  ideas  had  their  origin 
in  the  French  Revolution.  Of  the  attempts  to 
apply  them,  made  by  Owen,  Saint  Simon,  Fourier, 
and  many  followers,  it  cannot  be  said  that  the 
results  have  ever  been  successful  on  a  big  scale. 


*  Holyoake,   "The    Cooperative   Movement   Today." 
t  Henry    Dyer,    "The    Evolution   of   Industry." 

[100] 


DISTRIBUTION 


In  the  only  usual  cooperative  agency — the  store 
— each  applicant  for  admission  is  taken  to  accept 
the  principles  of  truthfulness,  justice  and  economy, 
in  production  and  exchange. 

1.  By  abolition  of  false  dealing,  direct  or  indi- 
rect— by  misrepresentation  or  by  concealing  facts 
about  articles  sold. 

2.  By  conciliating  through  equitable  division  of 
''profit"  among  capitalist,  worker  and  purchaser. 

3.  By  preventing  waste  of  labor  by  unregulated 
competition. 

There  are  indefinite  shades  to  the  cooperative 
principle.  Profit-sharing  has  had  its  failures  and 
successes.  Herbert  Spencer  held  that  coopera- 
tion would  solve  those  difficulties  which  are  now 
found  in  payment  by  the  piece.  The  sliding  scale 
in  which  the  workman's  earnings  are  proportioned, 
not  to  the  mere  amount  of  product,  as  in  ordinary 
piece  work,  but  to  the  selling  price,  has  been  ex- 
tensively applied  in  mining,  and  to  some  extent  in 
other  industries.*  It  is  only  one  step  further  to 
giving  the  workman  a  share  in  the  net  profits,  and 
logically  one  step  further  to  cooperation,  but  the 
difficulty  arises  when  the  laborer  shares  the  risk. 
The  reason  that  all  of  these  schemes  have  thus 


Hadley,   "Economics." 

[101] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


far  accomplished  so  little  is,  according  to  Emer- 
son,* that  the  connection  between  hard  and  effi- 
cient work  today  and  a  share  in  a  hypothetical 
profit  months  hence,  depending  on  ten  thousand 
elements  besides  the  individual's  effort,  is  too  slight 
an  incentive;  and  in  piece  work  the  man  might 
fail  from  conditions  beyond  his  control,  while  if 
he  succeeded  the  rates  were  cut.  "Between  the 
extremes  of  vague  and  unrelated  profit-sharing 
and  the  one-sided  exploitation  of  piece  rates,  many 
methods  have  been  evolv^ed  for  paying  variable 
wages  for  varying  efficiencies."  One  corporation 
paid  out  over  $600,000  in  1908  in  premiums  on 
the  "individual  effort"  plan — a  basic  price  for 
labor,  with  a  premium  for  superior  results. 
Whatever  methods  are  perfected,  for  enabling  the 
laborer  to  share  more  equitably  in  the  results  of 
industry,  it  is  reasonably  safe  to  guess  that,  in  a 
universe  which  believes  in  efficiency,  these  methods 
will  include  a  superior  reward  to  the  individual 
who  produces  superior  results. 

Holyoake  gives  the  following  incidents  in  the 
history  of  the  cooperative  movement : 

In   1777   a  tailor's  cooperative  workshop  was 


'Efficiency." 

[102] 


DISTRIBUTION 


opened  In  Birmingham,  with  the  object  of  finding 
employment  for  men  on  strike. 

A  cooperative  store  in  England  began  in  crude 
form  in  1794. 

A  cooperative  corn  mill  at  Hull  was  put  in  oper- 
ation in  1794. 

None  of  these  had  the  idea  of  superseding  com- 
petition or  establishing  a  new  principle  of  social 
life.  That  idea  first  came  into  English  minds 
through  Robert  Owen.  Although  Owen,  the 
greatest  of  English  socialists,  was  the  founder  of 
English  cooperation,  it  is  true  in  the  main,  as 
Marshall  says,  that  "cooperation  is  divided 
from  most  modern  socialistic  schemes  by  advocat- 
ing no  disturbance  of  private  property,  and  by 
abhorring  state  help  and  all  unnecessary  interfer- 
ence with  individual  freedom."  Professor  Ely, 
saying  that  the  device  of  cooperation  is  self-help, 
puts  it  halfway  between  labor  unionism  and  social- 
ism, and  says  that  cooperators,  when  worthy  of 
the  name,  are  firm  in  the  conviction  expressed 
for  them  by  John  Stuart  Mill : 

"That  the  industrial  economy  which  divides  society  ab- 
solutely into  two  portions,  the  payers  of  wages  and  the 
receivers  of  them,  the  first  counted  by  thousands  and  the 
last  by  millions,   is  neither  fit  nor  capable  of  indefinite 

[103] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


duration;  and  the  possibility  of  changing  this  system  for 
one  of  combination  without  dependence,  and  unity  of  in- 
terest instead  of  organized  hostility,  depends  altogether 
upon  the  future  developments  of  the  partnership  princi- 
ple." 

Mr.  Emerson  reasonably  asks  why  the  govern- 
ment cannot  furnish  work  for  all  who  need  it, 
without  any  interference  with  the  principles  of  in- 
dividual efficiency;  why  there  should  not  be  a  mini- 
mum wage  at  which  employment  in  national 
works,  reclamation  of  arid  lands,  harbor  dredg- 
ing, canals,  highways,  battleships  and  fortifica- 
tions, would  be  always  open,  thus  doing  away  for- 
ever with  the  disgrace  of  bread  lines.  This  prop- 
osition to  supplement  private  industry  is  entirely 
unrelated  to  the  proposal  to  supplant  it.  Social- 
ism does  not  appeal  to  the  students  of  efficiency. 
Socialism  would  not  lead  us  toward  the  ideal  of 
having  every  man  "work  with  the  reliability  of  a 
steam  valve,  yet  with  the  joy  of  a  hunting  dog 
and  the  inspiration  of  the  artist."  When  the 
government  in  city,  state  or  nation  is  as  efficient 
as  it  ought  to  be,  it  will  not  try  to  substitute  it- 
self, either  in  production  or  in  distribution,  for  the 
myriad  wills  and  intelligences  whose  efforts  now 
mean  progress,  but  it  will  undertake  and  accom- 

[104] 


DISTRIBUTION 


plish  the  task  of  seeing  that  no  person  of  average 
competence  and  wilHngness  ever  knows  extreme 
poverty.  Sympathy  can,  of  course,  be  so  empha- 
sized that  it  makes  for  weakness.  The  world  has 
been  as  much  helped  by  the  individual's  enlight- 
ened self-expression  as  by  softness  of  heart.  The 
danger,  however,  of  overdoing  the  Christian 
virtues  is  not  great.  The  Hebrew  reformers, 
reflecting  their  special  conditions,  gave  vivid  ex- 
pression to  one  high  ideal,  which  cannot  thrive 
alone,  but  to  which  we  have  never  yet  given  suffi- 
cient intelligent  consideration. 


[105] 


CHAPTER  V. 

Progress. 

Thomas  Jefferson,  contemplating  death,  se- 
lected for  his  tomb  words  which  should  speak  of 
him  to  unborn  millions.  To  those  millions  Jef- 
ferson presented  for  their  approval  the  best  of 
his  accomplishments.  He  did  not  record  the 
conventional  glories  of  his  life.  No  syllable  ap- 
pears upon  the  stone  at  Monticello  to  hint  that 
the  dust  there  buried  was  called  the  Governor  of 
a  state.  No  word  is  spoken  of  this  dust  as  Secre- 
tary under  Washington,  or  as  Vice-President  of 
his  country.  For  eight  years  he  sat  in  the  highest 
post,  but  a  traveler,  examining  history  on  this 
tablet,  would  not  be  confronted  with  this  fact. 
Two  services  only  are  graven  there — the  found- 
ing of  an  institution  where  men  and  women  still 
equip  themselves  for  service,  and  two  documents, 
in  which  are  proclaimed  the  rights  and  freedom 
of  mankind. 

Jefferson's  conception  of  importance  has  pre- 
vailed. It  is  less  than  ever  before  the  stage-ac- 
coutred hero  of  whom  we  think,  and  more  the 
faithful  worker  and  the  children  who  are  to  work 

[106] 


progrp:ss 


after  him.  Our  consciences  undertake  that  all 
one  day  shall  be  born  with  an  opportunity  to 
know  the  best  thought  of  man;  to  earn,  by  rea- 
sonable effort,  nourishing  food,  warmth,  light,  air 
and  leisure  sufficient  for  happiness,  growth  and 
contemplation;  to  take  a  real  and  immediate  part 
in  government  and  in  solving  the  questions  which 
affect  us  all;  to  enjoy,  in  short,  those  struggles, 
joys  and  sorrows  which  mark  the  difference  be- 
tween the  life  of  Socrates  and  the  existence  of  a 
contented  or  unhappy  pig.  There  is  a  pedantry, 
sometimes  found  among  those  who  are  credited 
with  culture,  which  puts  elegance  for  the  few  above 
comfort  for  the  many.  Modern  tendencies  may 
be  scorned  by  these,  because  apparently  they  make 
for  uniformity.  Among  them  one  may  hear  per- 
haps more  earnest  sorrow  on  the  changing  cos- 
tumes of  Japan  than  on  the  300,000  rooms  with- 
out a  window  in  New  York.  A  traveler,  dreaming 
of  himself  as  owner  of  the  Ducal  Palace,  is  grieved 
at  the  presence  of  so  many  other  tourists  and  hor- 
rified by  steamers  on  the  Grand  Canal.  When 
slums  disappear,  in  some  old  pretty  town,  such  a 
voyager  is  moved  almost  to  tears.  If  he  thinks  of 
classic  times,  it  is  of  himself  as  one  of  the  ruling  or 
decorative  few.      It  is  more  difficult   for  him  to 

[107] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


identify  himself  with  the  slave  or  peasant.  Even 
the  invention  of  printing  has  been  decried;  and  the 
trolley,  because  it  increases  the  number  of  those 
who  use  the  county  roads;  steel  construction,  be- 
cause ideas  of  architecture  can  be  applied  more 
easily  to  stone.  Man  certainly  shall  not  live  by 
bread  alone.  It  is  not  the  person  most  deeply 
versed  in  history  to  whom  modern  democracy 
seems  to  threaten  the  spirit's  high  accomplish- 
ments. Ideal  flights  have  never  been  reduced  to 
rule,  but  they  appear  most  frequently  when  all 
the  practical  faculties  of  man  are  in  their  flower. 
Greece's  genius  in  the  arts  corresponded  in  time 
with  her  study  of  politics  and  ethics  and  with  her 
leadership  in  the  moral  standards  of  the  world. 
Italy  led  the  world  in  artistic  light  in  the  same 
centuries  that  saw  her  busy  about  exploration, 
science  and  practical  concerns.  So  in  the  age  of 
Elizabeth,  and  in  the  most  glorious  days  of  Hol- 
land, and  in  ancient  Rome,  the  light  of  the  spirit 
has  burned  brightest  when  the  hand  was  on  the 
plow;  when  the  general  mind  eagerly  attacked 
the  practical  problems  by  which  it  was  confronted. 
While  no  barometer  can  foretell  the  rise  and  fall 
of  genius,  whatever  hard  work  our  generation  un- 
dertakes, in  reducing  poverty,  in  inventing  flying, 

[108] 


PROGRESS 


in  preserving  forests,  in  tinkering  or  replacing 
political  machinery,  in  building  up  a  religion  of 
humanity,  will  increase  and  not  lessen  our  chance 
of  registering  the  soul  of  this  time  in  some  word 
or  shape  that  the  world  will  not  readily  let  die. 
The  lights  of  inspiration  come  when  they  will,  but 
more  willingly  when  we  are  proving  ourselves 
men,  active  in  the  appointed  task. 

The  ideal  of  culture  is  coming  to  include  rele- 
vancy, sympathy,  comprehension  of  the  actual. 
Indeed,  this  is  one  of  the  widest  intellectual 
chasms  between  antiquity  and  ourselves.  The 
man  who  did  the  ordinary  labor  of  the  world 
once  lay  outside  the  calculations  of  the  prosper- 
ous. Labor  was  the  badge  of  a  lower  state.  The 
Greeks,  for  example,  although  ethically  so  far 
ahead  of  the  surrounding  nations,  and  intellectual- 
ly for  a  short  burst  superior  to  any  race  that  has 
lived  upon  the  earth,  were  not  permitted  to  work 
out  principles  which  had  their  most  eloquent  ex- 
pression in  Galilee.  A  frivolous  toast,  "Here's 
to  the  rich,  God  bless  'em,  and  as  for  the  poor, 
damn  'em,  they's  used  to  it,"  breathes  a  view  held 
less  widely  now  than  ever  before.  We  have  un« 
dertaken  to  carry  freedom  beyond  declarations  of 
independence,   beyond  the  machinery  of  govern- 

[109] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


ment,  and  to  introduce  it  into  economic  life. 
Churches  begin  to  reahze  that  if  they  are  to  sur- 
vive with  any  moral  leadership,  or  even  with  any 
moral  function,  they  cannot  treat  this  group  of 
questions  without  courage.  The  colleges  are  un- 
dertaking a  double  help.  Courses  such  as  this 
are  founded  by  men  who,  like  Mr.  Page,  realize 
how  much  may  be  gained  by  suggesting  to  young 
men  the  obligations  of  their  future  lives,  and  the 
colleges  in  the  main,  in  approaching  economic 
problems,  are  braver  than  the  churches.  In  addi- 
tion to  such  ethical  enlightenment,  moreover, 
they  are  undertaking  to  relate  their  teaching  to 
the  varied  needs  of  men.  The  tendencies  of  even 
the  older  eastern  colleges  show  something  of  this 
change,  in  more  freedom  of  choice  in  new  and 
practical  courses,  in  endeavoring  to  lower  the  age 
of  graduation,  and  in  a  spirit  of  sympathy  with 
whatever  may  be  the  labor  of  the  student's  life. 
It  is,  however,  in  other  regions  of  the  country, 
and  especially  in  the  West,  that  the  relation  of  the 
college  to  the  people's  life  has  grown  most  close. 
The  University  of  Wisconsin  guides  citizens  of 
the  state  in  the  most  immediate  problems  that 
confront  them.  The  farmer,  who  once  distrusted 
the  college,  now  follows  trustfully.     Because  of 

[110] 


PROGRESS 


higher  education  the  human  laborer  grapples  with 
the  earth  upon  more  even  terms.  Cultivation  is 
the  ability  to  realize  ideal  values;  but  training  of 
the  brain,  insight  into  truth,  harmonious  valuation 
of  this  world,  can  be  acquired  not  only  from  the 
Greek  and  Latin  tongues,  but  also  from  the  pro- 
cesses of  nature.  Literature,  language,  philoso- 
phy and  history  help  to  enlarge  the  vision,  to  re- 
fine and  guide  the  mind,  and  never  should  the 
colleges  lose  sight  of  breadth  of  view,  of  exqui- 
siteness  of  taste,  of  the  eternities,  but  if  culture  is 
unrelated  to  present  life,  it  runs  into  formality;  it 
becomes  an  echo;  and  even  "the  light  that  never 
was,  on  sea  or  land"  is  safer  if  it  plays  about  the 
busy  haunts  of  men.  Perhaps  the  college  needs  to 
be  careful  not  to  allow  the  older  culture  to  be  en- 
dangered, but  with  wisdom  it  can  save  that  culture 
and  yet  make  itself  the  servant  of  a  larger  class. 
When  Charles  W.  Eliot  left  Harvard,  that  insti- 
tution had  in  thirty-five  years  lost  nothing  in  ripe- 
ness of  atmosphere,  and  it  had  been  helped  by  the 
quality  of  his  mind  to  adapt  itself  to  the  require- 
ments of  changing  civilization.  When  Yale  se- 
lected as  her  present  leader  a  man  distinguished 
for  his  grasp  of  economic  truths  she  recognized 
that  the  movements  offered  to  the  sanest  thought 

[111] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


of  man  today  are  associated  with  the  production 
and  distribution  of  wealth.  Goethe,  the  most  cul- 
tivated of  men,  predicted,  with  the  clearness  which 
was  his,  that  by  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  dominating  problems  would  be  those  connect- 
ed, directly  or  indirectly,  with  the  industry  of  the 
machine.  The  fulfilment  of  his  vision  explains  the 
part  which  the  machine  has  played  in  the  course 
of  thought  attempted  in  these  lectures.  This 
is  a  course  in  the  ethics  of  business,  but  ethics  is 
not  something  unchanging,  dogmatic,  abstract. 
The  moral  truths  which  dominate  a  time  are 
brought  to  the  front  by  the  circumstances  of  the 
time.  The  feudal  system  could  not  lay  stress  on 
the  virtues  which  became  most  important  to  an 
industrial  bourgeoisie. 

We  have  seen  that  the  discovery  of  the  power 
of  steam  and  the  invention  of  machinery  put  a 
magical  weapon  into  the  hands  of  the  human  race. 
They  brought  it  about  that  if  a  man  labors  for  a 
given  time,  the  result  of  his  labor,  in  clothing, 
fuel,  vehicles,  books,  is  much  greater  than  it  was 
before.  They  not  only  increased  the  productive- 
ness of  labor,  but  changed  the  conditions  of  work 
and  man's  relation  to  his  fellows.  I  wish  to  end 
this  volume  by  summing  up  the  progress  already 

[112] 


PROGRESS 


touched  on,  and  by  describing  the  spirit  in  which 
progress  may  be  quickened  and  assured.  An  in- 
teresting remark  by  W.  R.  Greg,  in  his  "Reah/- 
able  Ideals,"  is  that  there  was  little  difference  in 
power  between  the  lamps  used  in  the  days  of  the 
pyramids  and  those  used  a  hundred  years  ago;  be- 
tween the  lighting  of  city  streets  in  the  days  of 
Pharaoh  and  in  those  of  Voltaire.  Moreover, 
the  laborer's  cottage  formerly  had  no  window. 
In  travel  Nimrod  and  Noah  were  on  an  equality 
with  Franklin.  When  Abraham  sent  a  message 
to  Lot,  or  Ruth  to  Naomi,  or  David  to  Jona- 
than, the  method  was  as  efficient  as  any  open  to 
George  Washington.  Robert  Bruce  traveled 
like  George  the  Third,  and  Ulysses  may  have 
sailed  as  fast  as  Paul  Jones.  Travel  and  light, 
however,  are  not  the  most  important  contributions 
to  happiness  of  our  modern  civilization,  nor  are 
garments,  although  it  may  be  observed  in  passing 
that  Queen  Elizabeth  is  supposed  to  have  worn 
the  first  pair  of  knit  hose  ever  brought  into  Eng- 
land. Men^do  not  grow  old  as  rapidly  as  they 
did  before  machinery  undertook  the  heaviest 
Avork.  Their  minds  are  better  stimulated.  The 
relative  number  who  have  the  narrowest  outlook 
is  constantly  and  rapidly  decreasing.     Modern  in- 

[113] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


dustry  has  so  greatly  diminished  that  universal 
scourge  Poverty,  that  even  in  the  London  slums 
conditions  are  improving.  Before  an  investigat- 
ing commission  in  London,*  one  of  the  most  expe- 
rienced speakers  told  of  a  time  in  his  memory 
when  husband  and  wife  sometimes  had  to  sit  up 
alternately  to  protect  their  children  from  the  rats 
which  swarmed  up  from  the  sewers,  and  when 
cesspools  were  often  not  more  than  a  foot  be- 
low rooms  teeming  with  families.  Poverty  in- 
creased until  the  cotton  manufactures  came, 
since  when,  taking  decade  by  decade,  it  has  been 
on  the  decline.!  Colonel  Wright  tells  us  that  be- 
fore the  factory  was  established,  the  working 
classes  of  England  lived  in  hovels  and  mud  huts 
that  would  not  be  tolerated  even  in  the  worst 
coal-mining  districts  in  this  country  or  in  Eng- 
land today.  As  to  the  justly  abhorred  sweating 
system,  it  "is  the  old  hand  system  prior  to  the 
establishment  of  the  factory,"  which  had  been  uni- 
versal. It  Is  of  the  Reformation  period,  in  France 
and  other  countries,  that  Colonel  Wright  de- 
scribes the  life  of  the  peasant  as  one  of  hopeless 


*  Wylie's   "Labor,    Leisure  and   Luxury." 

t  See     Carroll     D.     Wright,     "Some     Ethical     Phases     of     the     Labor 
Question." 

[114] 


PROGRESS 


and  perpetual  agony.  He  lived  in  ;i  hut,  like  a 
hare  in  his  hollow,  near  the  palisaded  inclosure  of 
his  lord,  "in  want  and  fear,  hardly  sheltered  and 
not  at  all  fed,  a  prey  to  epidemic  diseases;  later 
to  go  out  starved  and  trembling  to  see  his  plot  of 
ground  and  harvest  in  cinders;  to  repair  the  dam- 
age and  begin  again,  with  the  prospect  of  another 
similar  catastrophe."  Again:  "Huddled  to- 
gether in  what  poetry  calls  a  'cottage'  and  history 
a  'hut,'  the  weaver's  family  lived  and  worked, 
without  comfort,  convenience,  good  food,  good 
air,  and  without  much  intelligence.  Drunkenness 
and  theft  of  materials  made  each  home  the  scene 
of  crime  and  want  and  disorder.  Superstition 
ruled  and  envy  swayed  the  workers.  If  the  mem- 
bers of  a  family  endowed  with  more  virtue  and 
intelligence  than  the  common  herd,  tried  to  so 
conduct  themselves  as  to  secure  at  least  self- 
respect,  they  were  either  abused  or  ostracized  by 
their  neighbors." 

Mr.  D.  A.  Wells,  giving  a  similar  view  of  his- 
tory, hardly  exaggerates  when  he  says  that  the 
very  outcasts  of  England  are  now  better  pro- 
vided for  than  were  multitudes  of  her  laboring 
men  some  sixty  years  ago.  One  writer,  describ- 
ing the  time  of  Henry  III.,  says  of  the  working- 

[115] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


men  of  those  days  that  they  were  worse  clad, 
worse  fed,  worse  housed,  worse  taught;  that  they 
were  sufferers  from  loathsome  diseases  which  we 
know  nothing  of;  that  the  disregard  of  human 
life  was  so  callous  that  we  can  hardly  conceive  it. 
There  was  everything  to  harden,  nothing  to  soft- 
en; everywhere  oppression,  greed  and  fierceness. 
The  law  of  the  land  was  intensely  cruel  and  merci- 
less, and  the  gallows  and  the  pillory — never  far 
from  any  man's  fire — were  seldom  allovv^ed  to  re- 
main long  out  of  use.  Here  is  an  inventory*  of 
the  household  furniture  of  a  peasant  six  years 
before  the  death  of  Edward  I. : 


£ 

s. 

d. 

A  maize  cup, 

0 

0 

6 

Abed, 

0 

1 

6 

A  tripod, 

0 

0 

3 

A  brass  pot, 

0 

1 

0 

A  brass  cup, 

0 

0 

6 

An  andiron, 

0 

0 

3  1-2 

A  brass  dish, 

0 

0 

6 

A  gridiron. 

0 

0 

5 

A  rug  or  coverlet. 

0 

0 

8 

0        5         7  1-2 


Eden,  "The  State  of  the  Poor." 

[116] 


PROGRESS 


Such  a  man  could  earn  but  twelve  cents  per 
week.  For  three  or  four  centuries  following  the 
thirteenth  century  the  standard  changed  surpris- 
ingly little.  In  "The  Rise  of  the  Middle  Class," 
M.  G.  Mulhall,  in  the  Contemponiry  Review 
for  1882,  supporting  the  position  that  the  rich 
are  not  individually  as  wealthy  as  in  the  past, 
estimates  that  the  proportion  of  persons  in  mid- 
dle fortune  has  doubled,  and  the  condition  of  the 
working  classes  has  improved  in  even  greater  de- 
gree than  the  growth  of  capital.  In  countries, 
where  the  earnings  of  the  strictly  so-called  work- 
ing class  form  the  bulk  of  the  national  income,  as 
in  Russia  anci  Italy,  the  people  are  not  so  well  fed 
or  prosperous  as  in  those  (like  Great  Britain  and 
France)  where  machinery  has  largely  taken  the 
place  of  manual  labor.  "In  the  early  nineteenth 
century  the  agricultural  laborers  of  Sicily  and  the 
Lombard  plains,  the  rent-racked  peasants  of  parts 
of  the  Comarca  and  Campania,  the  migrant  har- 
vestmen,  whom  poverty  drove  from  the  Abruzzi 
to  sow  the  Maremna  with  their  bones,  had  a  lot 
of  hopeless  misery,  beside  which  that  of  the  Eng- 
lish factory  slave  or  Irish  peasant  was  bright."* 


•Colton  King,  "A  History  of  Italian  Unity." 

I  11'   I 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


1840 

1880 

22 

73 

15 

54 

269 

358 

84 

118 

In  forty  years  the  consumption  of  food  in  Eng- 
land per  inhabitant  increased  as  follows : 

Tea,  ozs., 
Sugar,  lbs., 
Wheat, 
Meat, 

In  the  same  period  the  ratio  of  savings  bank 
depositors  increased  over  300  per  cent,  the  ratio 
of  paupers  fell  to  the  lowest  known  since  the 
beginning  of  the  century,  and  the  persons  unable 
to  sign  the  marriage  register  fell  from  42  per 
cent,  to  23.  Robert  Griffen,  president  of  the 
Statistical  Society,  comparing  two  periods  in  the 
nineteenth  century  about  fifty  years  apart,  calcu- 
lated that  the  later  workman  got  from  50  to  100 
per  cent,  more  money  for  20  per  cent,  less  work; 
that  in  the  same  proportion  he  was  better  fed, 
clothed  and  housed;  and  that  he  paid  less  taxes 
in  return  for  much  greater  service  from  the  gov- 
ernment. Real  wages  probably  rose  about  60 
per  cent,  in  the  United  States  between  i860  and 
1 89 1,  and  about  70  per  cent,  in  Great  Britain. 

These  random  illustrations  will  serve  to  cast 
doubt  upon  the  poetic  view  of  poverty  in  the 
golden  past.     The  error  grows  largely  from  the 

[118] 


PROGRESS 


habit  of  comparing  the  man  who  now  makes  the 
tenth  part  of  one  article  with  him  who  formerly 
made  it  all.  The  factory  laborer,  however,  cor- 
responds not  to  the  village  blacksmith,  who  was 
one  of  the  leading  men  in  his  region,  but  to  the 
agricultural  or  common  city  laborer.  If  history 
is  read  truly,  the  well-to-do  and  poor  alike  have 
more  material  possessions  than  formerly,  at  a 
smaller  labor  cost,  and  the  world  is  a  better  place 
for  both  of  them. 

This  superiority  of  our  day  is  not  material  and 
intellectual  alone.  It  is  also  spiritual.  The  hu- 
man awakening  is  one  of  the  glories  of  the  mod- 
ern world.  Long  before  machinery  was  intro- 
duced, little  children  were  compelled  to  work  like 
slaves,  but,  as  President  Hadley  says,  it  was  only 
after  the  factory  was  born  that  their  wrongs  were 
noticed.  As  late  as  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  with  only  a  blanket  for  clothing,  women 
were  harnessed  to  trucks,  underground,  and  wo- 
men were  let  out  in  droves  to  overseers  whose 
cruelty  could  not  even  be  conceived  today.  What 
most  people  then  thought  of  such  abuses  may  be 
guessed  from  the  fact,  already  mentioned,  that 
even  John  Bright  thought  that  competition  must 
have  its  ruthless  way.     Who  would  dare  to  put 

[119] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


forth  in  Congress  today  the  political  mummery 
thus  set  forth  by  a  member  of  Parliament  a  little 
more  than  lOO  years  ago? 

"It  was  necessary  that  the  bulk  of  the  people  should  be 
very  poor  in  order  to  render  them  laborious;  that  the 
lower  ranks  should  have  but  little  prosperity,  in  order  to 
excite  their  industry;  and  that  there  should  be  some  ex- 
tremely rich,  to  supply  the  state  in  cases  of  imminent  exi- 
gency, and  advance  schemes  and  enterprises  which  re- 
quired capital." 

Democracy  seems  to  make  for  morals  in  most 
of  the  great  departments  of  our  lives.  How  long 
ago  was  bribery  respectable  in  England?  Slavery 
died  but  yesterday.  Not  ten  years  ago  rebates 
were  granted  and  received  without  a  question; 
almost  no  one  realized  a  sin  in  the  conspiracy  of 
railroad  and  shipper  to  murder  a  competitor. 
The  country  needed  to  be  educated  to  the  evil  of 
selling  falsely  labeled  and  adulterated  food  be- 
fore the  pure  food  bill  could  become  a  law.  We 
are  only  beginning  to  realize  the  moral  obliquity 
of  inside  speculation  by  corporation  directors. 
When  I  was  a  boy,  sharpness  in  business,  "Yankee 
shrewdness,"  was  admired  by  a  type  of  mind 
which  now  regards  with  distress  the  ruthless 
overreaching  of   our  fellows.      In  my  own  pro- 

[120] 


PROGRESS 


fession  there  are  greater  seriousness  and  sense  of 
responsibility  than  there  were  fifteen  years  ago. 
A  general  heightening  of  the  moral  tone  can  be 
seen  everywhere — slow,  no  doubt,  and  subject  to 
setbacks,  but  still  a  power.  As  long  as  one  genu- 
inely believes  in  progress  he  can  walk  through 
oceans  of  mediocrity,  undiscouraged.  The 
strength  or  courage  or  persistence  which  used  to 
go  to  storming  citadels  or  burning  heretics  will 
be  turned  toward  eradicating  the  common  house- 
fly, stopping  habits  which  breed  or  spread  disease, 
perfecting  machinery,  planting  trees,  increasing 
efficiency,  securing  better  houses,  or  fairer  wages, 
or  shorter  hours.  In  pursuing  such  ends  scope 
can  be  found  for  the  human  virtues,  practical  and 
ideal,  although  it  requires  more  imagination,  no 
doubt,  to  discover  inspiration  in  new  tasks  than  to 
read  in  literary  masterpieces  about  what  other 
ages  have  accomplished. 

In  this  progress  I  think  the  step  we  most  need 
now  is  to  free  ourselves  from  that  degree  of 
luxury  which  means  enslavement.  "Caesar  once," 
said  Plutarch,  "seeing  some  wealthy  strangers  at 
Rome,  carrying  up  and  down  with  them  in  their 
arms  and  bosoms  young  puppy-dogs  and  monkeys, 
embracing  and  making  much  of  them,  took  occa- 

[121] 


INDUSTRY  AND  PROGRESS 


sion  not  unnaturally  to  ask  whether  the  women  In 
their  country  were  not  used  to  bear  children." 
Too  heavily  laden  dinners,  poisonous  drinks,  need- 
less lackeys,  and  similar  destructive  encumbrances, 
ought  to  be  seen  in  a  clearer  light.  It  would  be 
a  gain  Indeed  If  society  could  see  something 
coarsely  wrong  in  whatever  is  morally  injurious  to 
the  owner  and  a  burden  to  his  struggling  fellow 
man.  Perhaps  If  many  thousands  of  the  most 
favorably  placed  persons  could  realize  that  their 
power  to  do  good  depends,  directly  or  Indirectly, 
upon  their  freedom  from  many  possessions,  it 
might  be  possible  to  establish  new  standards  of 
social  praise.  Spiritually  he  can  accomplish  most 
who  has  the  fewest  lowering  needs.  If  there  are 
any  final  solutions  to  the  Intricate  problems  by 
which  the  world  is  faced,  those  solutions  will  re- 
quire, in  every  case,  an  increasing  trend  in  us  all, 
and  especially  in  the  well-to-do,  toward  simplicity, 
toward  an  intimate  concern  for  those  who  are  less 
favorably  placed,  and  for  those  who,  coming  after, 
are  to  enter  a  world  prepared  by  us  for  their  recep- 
tion. 

The  bread  returns  upon  the  waters.  A  life  Is 
measured  not  by  its  specific  pleasures,  but  by  the 
sense  of  worth  with  which  It  Is  Interfused.     It  Is 

[  122  ] 


PROGRESS 


not  the  worker  for  Ideal  ends  whose  own  hand 
Impatiently  draws  for  himself  the  final  veil,  foy 
turns  to  ashes  only  when  It  Is  souglit  in  things 
which  are  too  near  and  small.  7'he  man  for 
whom  the  simple  moral  principles  are  not  only 
spoken  but  also  lived  in  truth  and  filled  with 
light, — he  is  a  man  for  whom  vanity  of  vanities 
Is  the  worst  of  all  descriptions  for  the  world  he 
loves.  Nothing  Is  more  entirely  proved  by  the 
most  ordinary  experience  than  the  superior  happi- 
ness of  the  man  or  woman  whose  ego  Is  almost 
forgotten  In  the  universe  of  which  it  Is  a  helping 
part.  We  think  often  of  this  ethical  progress  as 
If  It  meant  a  sacrifice  by  the  prosperous;  as  indeed 
It  does,  but  a  sacrifice  of  the  limited  to  the  abun- 
dant; a  sacrifice  which,  if  truly  made,  Is  paid  for 
many  fold.  Is  virtue  dull?  It  Is  the  only  thing 
that  never  can  grow  dull.  In  the  Intellectual  rich- 
ness of  the  Christian  gospel,  no  sayings  are  pro- 
founder  than  those  which  tell  how  the  Individual 
multiplies  his  own  life  by  devoting  it;  and  what 
the  Bible  thus  says,  the  philosophers  and  poets  of 
all  time  have  said,  and  are  saying  now,  and  must 
ever  say,  since  It  Is  true. 


[123] 


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